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jamie
Citizen
Username: Jamie
Post Number: 482
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Friday, April 14, 2006 - 3:28 pm: | 
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Tickets will be available at the door.
"He possesses a unique and reedy voice like Sting, a stage presence like James Brown, and lyrical content reminiscent of Bob Marley." - New York Press
Saturday, April 15th at 8pm
Chris Berry
Website:
http://www.chrisberry.net
Tickets:
$18 general admission
$15 students & seniors
Concert venue:
Burgdorff Cultural Center
10 Durand Road
Underground Hotline:
(973) 762-0119
About Chris Berry:
Berry's story "sounds like it was written by a Hollywood script writer" (Steve Leggett, All Music Guide). Maybe that is because it is hard to believe that a California White boy moved to Africa, became a spirit caller, and went on to sell over a million records in Southern Africa, where he still sells out stadiums. Now he is positioned to do the same in America.
A lot of small-town American kids flee home as soon as they hit legal age, in search of something. Many find their way back home, but few journeys match those taken by Berry. After over a decade living in Africa, Berry has now settled back in America following the edict given to him by African ancestor spirits to make a difference here, launching a slew of new activities to convey his message of justice and peace. His renewed American mission launches when Chris Berry and his band Panjea release Dancemakers, on Wrasse Records on April 18, 2006. Berry has drafted String Cheese's Michael Kang for new collaborations in Africa and for a May 2006 American tour supporting the new album.
But Berry is keeping busy with other efforts as well. He recently composed a 13-song CD accompanying Mine & Yours, Human Rights for Kids, Amnesty International's first illustrated guide for young children, consisting of one song for each of the thirteen Children's rights. Saxophonist and global consort leader Paul Winter has recruited Berry for Flyways, a musical celebration CD of the great annual bird migrations from Eurasia to Africa. Berry is creating a massive pan-African orchestra consisting of musicians from each country that the birds pass over, from Germany to South Africa.
His own winding and unexpected journey took flight at age 18, when Berry and his mentor-expat-African drum master Titos Sompa, with whom Berry had been studying since age 13-boarded a plane for Congo's Brazzaville. After a ten-day boat trip up the Congo River, Berry arrived in a remote village and immersed himself in the culture and music. His fascination of Zimbabwean mbira (thumb piano) music eventually lured him to Harare, where he settled and studied under legendary mbira master Monderek Muchena for ten years. During that time, Berry put together his band Panjea, whose pioneering blend of indigenous music, dance hall, and hip-hop earned platinum album sales throughout Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and beyond.
While studying in Zimbabwe, Berry became one of the first Westerners to be accepted among the elder mbira masters as one of their own. "I played for a lot of ceremonies where people would become possessed," said Berry. "Some of the old ancestors who came back spoke to me through these people: 'What are you doing here? There are lots of misguided people, lost and confused people, in your country. They're killing each other there. It's time for you to take what you've learned and bring it to your own country because they need it more than we need it here. That's your job. You're the bridge maker.'" And so back on his native soil we find him today, preaching an uplifting transcontinental message of hope to contagious, dance beats based in the Zimbabwean mbira and sacred Congolese ngoma drum rhythms.
Berry has been deemed a master of both mbira and ngoma drum, earning the title of gwenyambira ("one whose music calls the spirits"), a distinction reserved only for those who have achieved the highest fusion of the technical and the magical in music from the elder with whom he lived and studied during his years abroad.
Berry and the kids he knew in Sebastopol, CA grew up on Rush, the Scorpions; your standard rock & roll diet. In junior high he fell in with "a bunch of hoodlums," in his words, who sought amusement through shoplifting. One day, when he was around twelve, one of the guys pocketed a cassette from a local music store and hurried out to join Berry and the gang in their van. That tape changed his life. "It was a Fela Kuti album," he remembers. "We started playing it and it was like I had gone home. For hours I listened to it again and again. I couldn't stop playing it… and I couldn't stop dancing."
The onetime child hooligan has made good on his years of experience. Panjea, which over the years has developed into a multicultural ensemble united by his commitment to heal through music and "fighting racism with love." Their new release, Dancemakers, is a testament to their philosophy, with a catchy but thought-provoking number that asks, "Why do we kill people who kill people to show people that killing people is wrong?"
Panjea has grown from a band to a full-fledged non-profit institution: the Panjea Foundation for Cultural Education. "Panjea believes that through the sharing of ideas and open cultural exchanges the world can once again become a new kind of "Pangaea", united not by its physically joined continents but by its people." Berry, along with his family, and band all join in the foundation's activities, which include cultural tours to Africa, drum and dance classes, camps and workshops, and special performances, including an appearance at the 2000 Olympics.
Berry and his band bring it all home to America with their high-energy mix. But the root is Africa: "Africa is the source for almost all the popular music of the world," he insists. "You can hear it in blues, rock & roll, funk, hip-hop, and jazz. I've just found a more direct line to the source. I've got the medicine, and it's pure and strong."
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jamie
Citizen
Username: Jamie
Post Number: 483
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, April 15, 2006 - 10:24 am: |
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Chris Berry: American-African
Friday, April 14, 2006
BY MARTY LIPP
For the Star-Ledger
WORLD
Africa has received more than its share of missionaries, but now it is
sending one to America -- and, oddly enough, he's American.
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay area, the teenaged Chris Berry didn't
seem like someone who would one day be told by a tribal elder in the
Zimbabwe bush to be a bridgemaker between America and Africa. But Berry, who
became both an accomplished traditional player and an African rock star,
found himself pointed back toward the country he had left behind.
The flowering of this musical and spiritual growth began with the unlikely
fertilizer of petty theft in a California mall. Berry and his friends
shoplifted a cassette tape of Nigeria's Afrobeat king Fela Anikulapo Kuti,
eventually finding himself transfixed with the music.
"Fela made me realize that African music could make you move and dance like
nothing else," said the now 34-year-old Berry, a singer-songwriter who's
also considered a master of the mbira (thumb piano) and the Congolese ngoma
drum.
Berry began to study African music and eventually traveled to the Congo and
then Mozambique, where he lived among the homeless, playing on the streets
with the first incarnation of his band, Panjea (named for the prehistoric
land mass from which the current continents separated).
"I was living in a cardboard box and watching people die around me," he said
of his time in Mozambique. "I remember thinking how lucky the homeless
people were in America, that they had the option of actually taking food
from garbage cans."
After figuring out how to electrify the sound of the mbira, he and his band
began getting larger audiences. Their big break came when they won an
African version of "Star Search," becoming known throughout southern African
and releasing seven popular albums.
Berry also played traditional music in his adopted home north of Harare,
Zimbabwe. During one ecstatic ceremony, when dancers were being possessed by
spirits, Berry said, one elder told him to become a "bridge maker" between
Africa and his homeland, "to build that bridge with music."
So Berry returned to America, with the hopes of introducing African music
and culture. Now Brooklyn based, Berry recorded "Dancemakers," his first
U.S. release, which comes out on Wrasse Records on Tuesday. (On Saturday
he'll perform solo at Maplewood's Burgdorff Cultural Center.) The album is a
collection of bright, accessible pop, with varying degrees of African
flavor. The songs all have affirmative lyrics: One says, "I found love on
the mountain and I'm trying to bring it down to these streets."
Berry notes that his live shows are a mix of short-format tunes and longer
tunes that may be reminiscent of trance ceremonies if you are African, or
jam bands if you are American.
Ironically, Berry also feels it is his life mission to reintroduce young
Africans to their own traditional music.
"So many kids in Africa want to be like Kanye (West) or Jay Z, but what they
don't realize is that all of those hip-hop rhythms were originally created
from African music," he said. "I am trying to make it cool for the kids to
learn the traditional instruments from the elders."
Berry also formed the Panjea Foundation, which organizes trips to Africa so
that Westerners can learn about traditional music and culture.
"In Africa," Berry said, "music just exists in everything. ... It's not
about the end result, it's more of the journey. People live it, rather than
listen to it." |
las
Citizen
Username: Las
Post Number: 1575
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, April 15, 2006 - 10:48 am: |
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Looking forward to it! |
justmelaura
Citizen
Username: Justmelaura
Post Number: 477
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, April 15, 2006 - 2:36 pm: |
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I encourage y'all to go to Chris's website and listen to his music and then come on down to the Burgdorff tonight. Jamie does a great job bringing some really topnotch music to our community. This is Chris Berry's first stop on the his tour and then he is heading to Irving Plaza, The World Cafe, The Knitting Factory, Mercury Lounge, etc. Hope to see some of you there! |
jamie
Citizen
Username: Jamie
Post Number: 484
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, April 15, 2006 - 3:29 pm: |
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Thanks Las and Laura, should be a great show - tickets will be available at the door.
See you there! |
las
Citizen
Username: Las
Post Number: 1582
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, April 15, 2006 - 10:27 pm: |
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Beautiful, moving show, Jamie. Thanks so much. |
ess
Citizen
Username: Ess
Post Number: 1736
Registered: 11-2001
| | Posted on Saturday, April 15, 2006 - 10:48 pm: |
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Ditto, double ditto. Chris is very talented and his music was passionate and moving. Nice job, Jamie. |
justmelaura
Citizen
Username: Justmelaura
Post Number: 478
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, April 16, 2006 - 12:57 am: |
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I have to say that Jamie's shows are by far the top of the line, most impressive, musically talented performances that I have had the pleasure to be part of. Being an NYC Village Baby and now travel many miles to hear Artist's perform, I have always been impressed by Jamie's lineup. Please, Please, Please support the Underground. It is one of the many reasons that I moved to Maplewood/South Orange |
jamie
Citizen
Username: Jamie
Post Number: 485
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Sunday, April 16, 2006 - 1:20 am: |
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Thank you - thank you - thank you to las - ess and laura - and to everyone who came out.
It was a beautiful show.
Being able to meet people like Chris and produce this type of show is why I run this series. I've been extremely fortunate to find and book the type of talent that I've produced over the last 7 years. |
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