Only Connect: Howie B, Jon Hassell & Baaba Maal
April 6th, 2002 by freddie96
Howie B, Jon Hassell, & Baaba Maal (with John Beasley)
Live @ Only Connect
The Barbican, London
It’s not often you arrive at a gig to find an elegantly written essay awaiting you on your seat. But such was the case on Friday night at London’s Barbican concert hall; the piece in question was written by David Toop. ‘We must make vivid again those fading regions of our being which lie ″beyond description″,’ it begins, quoting John Hassell’s words from a work in progress called ‘The North and South Of You’. Sorry? It’s Friday night and I’ve had a long week’s work…
But what Toop went on to say was perhaps the most stimulating warm-up for a new sonic experience that I’ve had for a very long time. Citing Hassell’s notion of a music ‘beyond First World, beyong ″classical″, beyond ″pop″,’ balancing the ‘accumulated knowledge of the pre-media era (‘wisdom’) and the conditions created by new technologies’, Toop immediately put the audience on guard that we were about to witness an extraordinary fusion of techniques, talents and traditions.
And so it proved. Four men, united in one place for one evening only, playing unadorned warped chilled electronic dubby jazz garnished with the extraordinary vocal stylings of Baaba Maal. Visionary, challenging head music that forced you to close your eyes simply to absorb its manifold layers. It might sound pretentious to those who weren’t there, but to my ear they made a music taut with strictly regulated spatial dynamics. Howie B laid down a selection of very dubby, minimal grooves with the odd little effect or sample gently nudged into the mix every now and then. John Beasley added a wide variety of gentle keyboard improvisations, around which John Hassell wove the most delicate, muted trumpet, while Baaba Maal delivered vocal accompaniments – often with quite an interval between them – of utter conviction and passion. The degree of balance between these potentially abrasive elements was absolutely thrilling.
Indeed, in the careful shaping and respectful precision of this 21st century music I heard yet another version (in the Jamaican sense of the word) of the principal story the music of our age has to tell: the gradual creation of a world language that is wordless, timeless and label-less. A language beyond nationality, religion, gender, class, sexuality, and all such labels. Yet a language steeped in history nonetheless – history stripped of its ideological determinings. And as such an implicit, damning rebuke to what Toop refers to as the ‘entrenched global conflicts and political games of the moment’. Hard, creative work may well be the only thing that can save us all from cutting each other’s throats.
In all it was a very thought-provoking event that one can only hope will bear further fruit. Although it positively reeked of intense absorption and high seriousness, it was impossible not to smile at the sight of the kinetic Howie B wiggling his butt in time to almost inaudible subfrequencies. At times I wondered whether these four men were hearing the same thing – there were a number of apparently quite formless passages, and many songs only made their direction plain in conclusion – but that was clearly the nature of the challenge they had set themselves. When harmony emerged, it seemed hard won and all the sweeter for it.
There’s a lesson for us all in there somewhere.
Freddie B, 5 April 2002
Written with audio assistance from Amon Toibin and Herbert.
