Liberation On the Dance Floor

On the night of January 17, I found myself at Sounds of Brazil (SOB’s) in New York to see Antibalas, an Afrobeat orchestra with heavy influence from the legendary African musician and revolutionary Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Antibalas’ music is very heavy and makes the body move, sometimes involuntarily, with strong trumpets and various saxophones leading a hardcore Afrobeat generated by guitars, bass, electric piano and other instruments.

On the night of January 17, I found myself at Sounds of Brazil (SOB’s) in New York to see Antibalas, an Afrobeat orchestra with heavy influence from the legendary African musician and revolutionary Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Antibalas’ music is very heavy and makes the body move, sometimes involuntarily, with strong trumpets and various saxophones leading a hardcore Afrobeat generated by guitars, bass, electric piano and other instruments.

Their songs are ten minutes on average, so you’re getting your groove for quite some time when they are performing ten to fifteen songs at a single performance. At SOB’s the crowd was full of people of all ages, shapes and colors, all getting their groove on.

As soon as the opening band finished their set I grabbed my comrade and we rushed to the front of the stage. This was the first time I would see Antibalas in concert and after listening to their last album Liberation Afrobeat Vol.1 almost nonstop and hearing about them from a lot of my progressive and radical comrades, I was excited to see what they could do on stage.

As the band came out and began to tune their instruments, I found myself looking around for familiar faces. The place was packed, and there was a somewhat uncomfortable feeling of excitement that was felt by everyone. As the band started their first set, the crowd turned in to a mass of bodies, everyone getting down with the extreme level of funk being generated by the group on stage. The experience of being surrounded by the youth, all celebrating the power of music, was intense.

The way the music created by Antibalas makes your body move is almost frightening. In the background of their songs, the hard core bass lines complement the sounds of the leading trombone, and the other various brass and woodwinds that play a role in this orchestra. Each song is an eternity of heavy, funky stuff. There were a few times when I found myself out of breath and wanting to sit down, but I couldn’t; there was just too much unity on the dance floor for me to let it pass by.
The show got really interesting when they started their second set. Antibalas hit us off with some of the tracks off their new album Talkatif. I thought their first album was funky, but I found that they developed more of the essence of the Afrobeat sound and really took full advantage of having a band with fifteen musicians.

The place to be was in front of the stage. That was where there was the most unity and solidarity, and where the youth were. People were so relaxed with everything going on around them; the sound of liberation, and how the body moves when touched by it.

When the show was over I stepped out of SOB’s into the cool January night, the wind chilled my sweat-soaked skin, but I deserved it for not letting up on the dance floor. I owe a lot of the energy I felt on the dance floor to the crowd of young people at the front of the stage. The unity at SOB’s that night made it one of the best examples of the power of music and liberation.