Arif Lohar w/ Arooj Aftab
Asia Society
Friday, April 27

Better than: Watching a certain very popular video obsessively.

As another occasionally devotional songwriter once sang: "The band in Heaven plays my favorite song. They play it once again, they play it all night long." Pakistani folk singer Arif Lohar didn't reach quite this level of repetition-compulsion during the first of his two sold-out evenings at Asia Society this weekend as part of its ongoing Creative Voices of Muslim Asia series. He did, however, demonstrate that nothing so befits a true star as giving his audience exactly what it wants—and then piling on even more of the same.

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Spoek Mathambo
S.O.B.'s
Thursday, March 22

Better than: Probably any other African rap act.

"So much posse in the house!" exulted Spoek Mathambo at the beginning of his midnight set. "It's a family thing—like a coke family." Or maybe he meant the Koch family; hard to say. Nevertheless, half a dozen acts had preceded the Johannesburg rapper-producer, ranging from a casual dorm-room reggae session by his electronics-wielding saxophonist, the American expatriate Chllngr, to Brooklyn-based rapper Cerebral Vortex, whom Spoek joined for the Douster-produced party favor "Drunk Like That."

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Elza Ruiz

Ki Purbo Asmoro's Wayang Kulit: Shadow-Puppet Theater of Indonesia
Asia Society
Friday, March 16

Better than: Goldman Sachs's sucker "muppets."

The first surprise to be revealed on Friday night at the Asia Society: Modern classical Javanese shadow puppetry isn't so much about shadows anymore.

During the greeting music for this rare local performance of wayang kulit, a projected note pointed out that Indonesian audiences have preferred the light side of the screen for some twenty-five years. Which explained why the superstar dhalang (puppeteer-narrator) Ki Purbo Asmoro faced his screen with his back to the audience while making his two-dimensional buffalo-hide puppets dance, fight, philosophize, slap, and bicker. (Kulit means skin.) During this three-hour performance of Déwa Ruci (Bima's Spiritual Enlightenment), audience members were able to wander behind the puppetmaster's screen and take a gander at the shadowy side of the ancient Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata, from which the Bima episode derives.

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Lindsay Beyerstein

Secret Society Big Band
Galapagos Art Space
Friday, March 9

Better than: A certain big band that snoozed its way through the blues uptown a couple of nights earlier.

Darcy James Argue's Secret Society—an impeccably appointed 18-wheeler of a jazz group in top shape—made only its second appearance since the November premiere of Brooklyn Babylon, a collaboration with the graphic novelist Danijel Zezelj at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival, and if it's any indication of the direction in which Argue is steering his ensemble, look out below.

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Howlin Rain
Brooklyn Bowl
Wednesday, February 8

Better than: Any California jamband since Garcia died.

A great rock guitarist needs a signature affectation. Ethan Miller's happens to be an abrupt upstrum that, combined with a backward stagger, probably makes him something of an onstage hazard to his bandmates. When he really gets into it, as he does with elemental regularity, the Howlin Rain leader resembles a spasmodic marionette under the influence of a power greater than himself—call it the power of rawk. With his long thinning hair, big black beard, and "special shirt"—as he referred to the spiffy brown vintage-'70s number he was sporting—Miller also sometimes resembles a defrocked rabbi on the run. And when he opens his mouth, the history of classic arena-rock vocals passes before your ears in a full-throated wail embracing the combined spirits of Bruce Springsteen, Rod Stewart, Leslie West, Greg Rolie, and the ghost of Freddy Mercury.

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Amadou & Mariam
The Box
Monday, February 6

Better than: Waiting for the official tour.

When it comes to music rooms with a stunning view, it was tough to beat the penthouse at the Cooper Square Hotel (now André Balazs's unfortunately named The Standard East Village) last summer, when Annie Ohayon's L'Afrik C'Est Chic series featured guitarist Amadou Bagayoko and his singing wife Mariam Doumbia during a handful of stunning evenings. As the setting sun created spectacular effects on the surrounding architecture, the couple from Mali, who also happen to be blind, performed stripped-down versions of their repertoire inches away from a stylish international crowd shoehorned into the bar. It was sort of perfect.

Amadou and Mariam's equally minimal invitation-only appearance at The Box was less so, although still something of a treat. It came at the end of a day dedicated to shooting a video for "Wily Kataso" (Go Home) from the fiftysomething pair's April release, Folila (We Came to Play the Music). Guest vocalists Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone from TV on the Radio were also on hand. As members of the production team gesticulated wildly from the sides of the stage, the four singers lip-synced as videocameras filmed the dancing crowd. It didn't take much to manufacture enthusiasm. The audience had already been primed with attire suggestions such as "artist hipster," "Warhol-esque dance party," "Manhattan business professional," "sexy night out," and—best of all—"TV on the Radio urban." As Duffman might say: "Oh yeah!"

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via The Musical Box

The Musical Box perform The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
Tribeca Performing Arts Center
Friday, November 25

Better than: Frank Zappa's 1984 Thing-Fish pictorial for Hustler.

Besides licensing the rights to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway to the cover band The Musical Box, who've been touring it recently, the British progressive rockers Genesis went the extra mile and tossed in the costumes, instruments, and slideshow used when they performed their 1974 double-vinyl concept album in concert. The Lamb Lies Down is a mind-boggling concatenation of doublings and mirrorings that takes place underground, in "an almost perfect reconstruction of the streets of New York"—and the Montreal quintet's commendably detailed recreation adds one more ontological level to composer-lyricist Peter Gabriel's Joycean house of mirrors. The Musical Box presented a simulacrum of a simulacrum in the form of a nostalgia-free reminder of the sort of artistic ambition foolishly negated by punk rock only a couple of short years later.

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While hip-hop spread the word during the Arab Spring (at least they didn't have to endure the incessant drum circles of Zuccotti Park), Palestinian composer, bandleader, and oud and violin virtuoso Simon Shaheen heard echoes of a remarkably beautiful and sophisticated era of Arabic music throughout the popular revolts of 2011. This Saturday at Roulette, Shaheen will connect the dots between this year's rebellions and the nationalist songs that flourished during the collapse of colonialism some six decades ago. Three great singers—Nidal Ibourk (Morocco), Naji Youssef (Lebanon), and Ali Amr (Palestine)—and a chorus will join Shaheen's Near Eastern Music Ensemble at "Songs for the People: Voices of the Arab Renaissance", a World Music Institute concert. Even if you don't understand Arabic, the combination of emotionally devastating vocals, virtuosic musicianship, and mind-blowing improvisations should prove fairly spectacular. SOTC spoke to Shaheen about the first and second Arab renaissances, Occupy Wall Street, and the United States' growing appreciation of Arabic music.

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Megafaun
Mercury Lounge
Saturday, September 24

Better than: More than a few '90s Dead shows I could mention.

Set openers don't get much more inviting than "Real Slow," a slyly seductive scene setter wherein "people come from miles just to take a seat and watch the show." Better yet, North Carolina-based Megafaun expanded upon their loping call to this intimately communal cultural campfire in a particularly bewitching way, subtly accelerating and decelerating the tune's heady midtempo roll with droning guitars. And it just kept getting better during Saturday night on Houston Street, with the quartet offering a sort of sweet, Southern post-jamband succor against the knucklehead parade under way right outside the door.

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via On-U Sound

Beware of unearthly echoes, gut-thwomping bass bombs, and gaping holes in the sonic fundament when the Dub Invasion Festival hits town this week. Produced by Brooklyn's Sound Liberation Front and the Subatomic Sound label, the 10-day event begins Thursday with a master class presented by the prolific and influential British producer Adrian Sherwood, then continues with appearances by Mad Professor, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Twilight Dub Circus, Clive Chin, Ticklah, Dr. Israel, Badawi, and other maestros of the mixing board.

Sherwood, who makes a rare local appearance with Brixton DJ Brother Culture at Dominion on Friday, launched his On-U Sound label in 1981 with the New Age Steppers' debut. He has since released more than 100 albums, using scores of musicians in a collective capacity while also producing and remixing for countless acts both famous and obscure. Rooted in the classic dub style developed in Jamaica during the '70s, Sherwood's ever-evolving aesthetic cuts across punk rock, jazz, hip-hop, musique concrète, dubstep, and jungle. We spoke by phone while he was at his home in the seaside town of Ramsgate, about an hour outside London.

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