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Hazmat Modine & Gangbé Brass Band
(New York, Cotonou / USA, Benin)
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In General
New York’s Hazmat Modine and West Africa’s Gangbé Brass Band to Collaborate on 2011 Tour
Imagine, if you can, the spectacle of a dazzling, funky eight-piece West African brass band sharing the stage with a versatile, virtuosic American octet that seamlessly integrates early blues and jazz, several Latin and Caribbean genres, numerous indigenous European styles, and sundry other international influences! That is precisely what awestruck audiences will experience when the New York-based Hazmat Modine mixes it up in concert with Benin’s Gangbé Brass Band as one supersized supergroup in 2011. A danceable, cross-cultural feast, the Hazmat Modine-Gangbé collaboration is a one-of-a-kind celebration of unprecedented musical possibilities.
The two bands first came together at a mountaintop music festival in Malaysia, where they instantly recognized that, despite their very diverse backgrounds, they were kindred spirits. The 16 musicians vowed to someday make music together. “I completely fell in love with them because they had this incredible dynamic, an incredible joy in what they were doing,” says Wade Schuman, founder and leader of Hazmat Modine. “They are like a single organism. They could sing, they could dance, they had a sense of humor and a sense of gravitas. They had a huge range and they did complex compositions. This was one of the greatest bands I’d ever seen. I thought, some day I really want to do something with this band.”
It took four years but finally, Hazmat Modine and Gangbé Brass Band found an opportunity to make good on their mutual respect for one another when they met up again at a tour stop in Germany. “It exceeded my expectations,” says Schuman. “There was this incredible synergy and sense of ideas going back and forth.”
The raw live tapes from that exciting collaborative gig provide a hint of what’s in store when the two entities hit the road together next year.
“The thing about the project that’s exciting to me is that no matter what language we speak, there’s an underlying musical ethos that we share,” says Schuman. “And there really is a certain joie de vivre. Both bands have a positive sensibility and both bands are interested in a range of expression. Together, it’s a very exciting thing because we can explore whole avenues that open up between us.”
Just as the members of Hazmat Modine have been influenced by African music and its Western offspring—blues, R&B, jazz, reggae, etc.—so too have the Gangbé musicians been influenced in turn by American sounds. In addition to their own blend of West African juju and vodou music, they’ve absorbed funk, salsa, blues, jazz and big band sounds from across the Atlantic.
“They’ve digested American music, and American music came out of African music,” says Schuman. “So it’s this beautiful ping-pong ball bouncing back and forth. The idiomatic language of Gangbé is pretty Western: They’ve totally swallowed the whole Latin American tradition and made it their own. You can hear it in their playing. At the same time you hear a lot of Fela, who was listening to James Brown and artists like that. And the thing about Hazmat that makes us an unusual band is that so many of us have the capability of understanding and playing different idiomatic voices. What’s interesting is how much we all have in common.”
In essence, the meetup of the two entities takes African music full circle. The amalgamation of Gangbé’s percussion, saxophones, trumpets, trombone and tuba with Hazmat’s array of guitars, brass and woodwinds, percussion, harmonica and other instruments—as well as the engaging, impassioned vocals of both outfits—serves to accentuate the strengths of both bands, rather than draw attention to their different backgrounds as Americans and Africans.
About Hazmat Modine, NPR has said, “Its charm lies in how it lends an air of mystery and other-worldliness to familiar sounds,” while Afropop Worldwide has said, “The Gangbé Brass Band is a sensation. It's that simple.”
Sixteen musicians, endless possibilities! When Hazmat Modine and the Gangbé Brass Band join forces as one onstage, these innovative, road-tested global forces of nature are sure to shake the rafters in every town they visit!
Line-up live:
Olatoundji Magloire Ahouandjinou (Trumpet)
Wendo Martial Ahouandjinou (Trumpet)
Benoît Avihoué (Percussion)
Athanase Obed Dehoumon (Buggle)
Lucien Gbaguidi (Saxophone)
Crespin Kpitiki (Percussion)
James Vodounnon (Tuba)
Eric Yovogan (Trumpet)
Wade Schuman (Diatonic Harmonica, Guitar, Banjitar, Lead Vocals
)
Bill Barrett (Diatonic Harmonica, Chromatic Harmonica, Sheng, Vocals)
Joseph Daley (Tuba
)
Richard Huntley ( Percussion)
Pete Smith (Guitar)
Pamela Fleming (Trumpet, Flugelhorn)
Steve Elson (Baritone Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone, Clarinet, Duduk, Flute
Michael Gomez (Acoustic and Electric Guitars, Banjitar, Steel Guitar)
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