African music has influenced everything from blues to electronica to rap, but few take time to listen to the source.
The interplaying sounds and histories of African musical styles will be brought to Westwood this Sunday night, as “West Africa Meets Westwood,” a free concert sponsored by the Cultural Affairs Commission and the Office of Residential Life, sets up shop in the Covel Grand Horizon Room.
The concert, directed by fourth-year ethnomusicology student and trumpeter Will Magid, will feature a collaboration between a dozen UCLA students and two world-renowned Nigerian musicians ““ Baba Ken Okulolo and Soji Odukogbe.
“I decided to go to Ghana to study abroad,” Magid said, explaining how his dream senior recital came into fruition. “I lived in West Africa for six months and kind of played with highlife bands out there. When I got back, I didn’t really have an outlet for that here and a lot of people were really interested in my travels and my involvement in the music, so I just decided to do something here.”
The concert is slated to feature everything from highlife, Afrobeat and jazz, to original student compositions to the sounds of the wildly popular juju music of Grammy-nominated King Sunny Adé and the music of legendary Nigerian musician, human rights activist and afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti.
“Those guys are like legends,” said fourth-year biochemistry student Yomi Fashola.
“They’re Nigerian legends. They’re both from my culture. They speak my language. It’s a very big deal for me (to hear their music performed live).”
A Nigerian transplant himself, Fashola plans to attend Sunday’s concert in order to get a musical taste of home. Highlife music is the sort of thing that gradually, methodically and effervescently invades the senses. Its sweetly pulsating melodies dare even the shyest of wallflowers to keep from dancing ““ or at the very least, from tapping their toes along with the singing guitar and the clamoring horns that serve as highlife’s instrumental backbone. Its sweet and lighthearted sounds first began sweeping across West Africa in the 1920s, and has been producing an inherently organic joy in music listeners ever since.
Afrobeat, on the other hand, takes the vivacious sounds of highlife and catapults them to another level, calling, wailing and swinging to a beat all its own as it has been doing since the 1970s. Set against the backdrop of omnipresent and polyrhythmic percussion, Afrobeat sails through the air amid a sea of trumpets, saxophones and pulsating vocals.
Sunday’s concert aims to explore the complexities of West Africa’s past and present musical traditions, tracing the evolution of these still-prevalent styles.
“People think of Africa as a country in and of itself,” said Kalil Wilson, UCLA alumnus and son of Baba Ken Okulolo.
“It’s hard for people who haven’t been exposed to any of the intricacies of the many different cultures that are in Africa to differentiate between the regions. (Asking someone to describe the sound of contemporary West African music) would be akin to asking someone to describe the sound of contemporary American music. I think that would be the biggest misconception, that Africa is just a contiguous cultural and musical unit instead of being as complex and diverse as any other culture in the world.”
As complex as the web of African cultures are the rhythms that underlie the music.
“It’s incredibly intoxicating with a fascinating interlocking rhythmic system,” Magid said. “There are these different rhythms that are all interconnected where each musician is playing their own part and improvising and all these parts that are going on simultaneously.”
Magid, having played with Okulolo in the Bay Area after befriending Wilson at UCLA, hopes to facilitate a cultural exchange that goes far beyond mere appreciation of different musical styles during Sunday night’s concert on the Hill.
“Early (American) popular music really comes from an African aesthetic that’s so pure and so rich in West African music even today,” Magid said. “I really think that a lot of people will enjoy this music when they hear it. It really brings people together.”