Amazones—Women Drummers of Guinea (Friday, Saturday)
Named for the women warriors of the ancient kingdom of Dahomey, these master percussionists from the West African country of Guinea draw inspiration from their Mandingue roots, but expand upon the tradition with a modern presentation. Dancing with athletic skill and playing percussion such as the djembe, Amazones create jubilant performances. Sponsored by Women of Lotus, IU African Studies Program.
Artist website | Back to top
Anat Cohen Quartet (Saturday, Sunday)
Tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Anat Cohen was voted a rising star clarinetist in the 2005 Down Beat Critics Poll. Originally from Tel Aviv, she is now based in NYC. For the past six years, she has been a member of the Diva Jazz Orchestra (performing with guest artists such as Nancy Wilson, Dave Brubeck, Slide Hampton, and Diane Schuur). She is also an integral part of the Choro Ensemble, which is dedicated to the authentic instrumental choro tradition of Brazil. The group was a featured guest artist at the Apollo Theater with the Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Sponsored by Women of Lotus; Sunday World Spirit Concert appearance sponsored by Robert A. & Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program, IU
Artist website | Back to top
“Balkan Beat Box is like an Eastern Bloc party turned to 11 at 4:30 a.m. - only live and with musicians hailing from Turkey, Israel, Morocco, Bulgaria and Spain.” So says the Denver Post, but Lotus audiences already know BBB formula for a live show: relentless percussion and dance beats (and maybe even a few busted drumheads), fat horns, and savvy, unexpected lyrics. Funky, hip music for dancing, celebrating, and sweating. Sponsored by WFHB
Artist website | Back to top
Led by singer Brina Vogelnik, Brina adapts traditional Slovenian lyrics and melodies to a contemporary style, bringing old songs back into the light. The ensemble also plays new original music that samples from other folk traditions (including jazz and US folk). Backed by a quintet of guitar, violin, bass, drums, and keyboard, their sound can conjure the intimacy of an urban club or a village celebration. Sponsored by Women of Lotus; IU Russian & East European Institute.
Artist website | Back to top
Chic Gamine (Friday, Saturday)
This five-woman a cappella group comes from Manitoba, in the heart of Winnipeg’s French community. Combining brilliant, creative harmonies with vocal and instrumental percussion, they perform vocal music from around the globe (including the Middle East, Brazil, the US, French Canada, and the Balkans). Chic Gamine is Annick Brémault, Ariane Jean, Alexa Dirks, Andrina Turenne, and Sarah Dugas, with the innovative percussion accompaniment of Sacha Daoud. Sponsored by Women of Lotus
Artist website | Back to top
Chirgilchin (Friday, Saturday)
“Throat singing” or overtone singing is an extraordinary vocal form in which one singer produces multiple sounds -- resonating low sounds with flutelike high notes. This astonishing, beautiful, ancient vocal tradition is kept alive in just a few countries across Central Asia, south of Siberia. Chirgilchin comes from Tuva. Their songs tell of life on windswept grasslands and steppes, and the vocals often recreate the sounds of birds, water, wind on the plains, and horses' hooves. Sponsored by IU Inner Asian & Uralic National Resource Center
Artist website | Back to top
He'll be familiar to Lotus audiences for his diverse film work (the list includes Terms of Endearment, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Dumb & Dumber, Good Night and Good Luck, The Squid and the Whale, and The Lookout.) However, Jeff Daniels is also an accomplished singer-songwriter and a witty and engaging raconteur. A Michigan native, he puts considerable energy into the Purple Rose Theater Company in his hometown, Chelsea. He kicks off the 2007 Lotus Festival in Bloomington's own historic downtown theater.
Artist website | Back to top
Guy Davis has dedicated himself to reviving traditions of acoustic blues and bringing them to as many ears as possible, through the material of great blues masters, African American stories, and his own original songs, stories, and performance pieces. His writing and storytelling have been influenced by Zora Neale Hurston, Garrison Keillor, and by the late Laura Davis (his 105-year-old grandmother). He’s performed with his parents, Ruby Dee and the late Ossie Davis, as well as in his own Off-Broadway productions.
Artist website | Back to top
Dhoad Gypsies of Rajasthan
(Friday, Saturday)
This ensemble of talented performers comes from different Rajasthani communities, religions (Muslim and Hindu), and artistic castes. They include sapera-kalbelya (‘fakirs’, dancers, and snake charmers), langas (poets), manganyar (troubadors), and musicians. The music can go from lyric and hypnotic to climactic and frenzied, and is part of a performance tradition that stretches back to the days when troubadors entertained maharajahs in lush palaces. Artist website / Back to top
Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas (Friday)
Master Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser, regarded as one of Scotland’s premier musical ambassadors, presents the music of his homeland with unsurpassed eloquence, passion, and energy. With the young cellist Natalie Haas, he creates a new sound in Celtic music. In addition to being a solo performer, Haas is a member of Mark O'Connor's Appalachian Waltz Trio. Sponsored by Friends of Old-Time and Celtic Music; Women of Lotus; IU West European Studies.
Artist website | Back to top
Javier Garcia (Friday, Saturday)
An inventive and energetic performer based in Miami, the Madrid-born Garcia is a composer, arranger, producer, guitar & percussion player, and singer. His pop sounds derive from many Latin and Caribbean genres: rock, hip-hop, ska, calypso, funk, reggae, and tropical rhythms. Joyful Latin-based dance and party music, perfect for a Lotus Festival stage. Sponsored by IU Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies
Artist website | Back to top
A last-minute (and very welcome) addition to this year's Lotus roster. Jewish Week says, “This is not your father’s klezmer band.... unless, of course, your father was Sid Vicious.” Last year, Lotus audiences learned to love this band from new York's Lower East Side, and their mix of raucous klezmer, Yiddish theater references, rock, soul, funk, and pop culture. The six-member band includes Annette Ezekiel (accordion, vocals), Aaron Diskin (vocals), and Alicia Jo Rabins (violin). Sponsored by Women of Lotus
Artist website | Back to top
The Lonesome Sisters
(Saturday, Sunday)
2007 Lotus Dickey Old-Time Artist
Mournful can be beautiful. Sarah Hawker and Debra Clifford are known for their hard-hitting, old-time country and mountain harmonies and their love of singing about tragedy and heartache. The vocal technique owes much to traditional Appalachian music and Primitive Baptist singing. More about Lotus Dickey here. Sponsored by Women of Lotus
Artist website | Back to top
March Fourth Marching Band
(Friday, Saturday)
March Fourth (the name comes from the date of their first gig) is a high-energy marching band to the nth degree. A little Fellini, a little Mardi Gras, a little Afro-Latin, and a lot of brassy, big-band energy: March Fourth is a happening in the street and on the stage. Accompanied by stilt-walkers, dancers, and other surprises, this is your school marching band transformed and super-coo.
Artist website | Back to top
From the folk music traditions of his home country, this young artist turned his attention to Rai music and began to develop a Tunisian style of Rai distinct from that of Algeria, the music's cultural home. Rai is vocal music that blends Bedouin music with other traditions (including African, Arabic, Spanish, French). Born in southern Tunisia, MC Rai now lives in Los Angeles. Sponsored by IU African Studies
Artist website | Back to top
Helder Moutinho (Saturday, Sunday)
Moutinho sings fado, the soulful urban folk music of Portugal. He communicates destiny, betrayal, sadness, pain, happiness, love, and nostalgia—the classic subjects of true fado. The songs are beautiful and marked by the feeling of saudade (roughly translated as “longing” or “nostalgia”). He is one of a very few male fado singers, and is accompanied by the classical and Portuguese guitar. Sponsored by IU West European Studies
Artist websit | Back to top
Puerto Plata (Friday, Saturday)
Singer, guitarist, and master sonero José Manuel Cobles is “Puerto Plata”. An 83-year-old veteran of the guitar tradition of the Dominican Republic, he is adept in its many forms—bolero, merengue, ranchera, mangulina, bachata—and above all, son. The musical tradition known as son originated in Cuba, and its rhythm is an essential ingredient in contemporary salsa. Sponsored by IU Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies
Artist website | Back to top
The Red Stick Ramblers play a mixture of Cajun fiddle tunes, Western Swing, and traditional jazz of the 1920s and 1930s alongside their own tradition-inspired originals. Based in Southern Louisiana, they build upon the songs of fiddlers like Dennis McGee and Dewey Balfa, along with jazz and country swing bandleaders such as Bob Wills and Django Reinhardt. Their sound is deliciously retro, with danceable rhythms and strong, elegant melodies. Sponsored by Friends of Old-Time & Celtic Music
Artist website | Back to top
There aren't 17 of them, and they're not hippies, but who cares? This German band takes Eastern melodies, Balkan rhythms, French chanson, Cajun tunes, Jewish traditional songs, and other stuff and throws it all in a musical blender to create their “Berlin Style“ of pop music (sung in German, English, and French). The Hippies' musical backgrounds derive from rock-pop, classical music, and jazz; the instrumentation includes accordion, trombone, trumpet, violin, cello, woodwinds, mandolin, ukulele, banjo, Irish bouzouki, guitar, double bass, Indian harmonium, and mouth harp. Music for the cosmopolitan in all of us. Sponsored by IU West European Studies, IU Germanic Studies
Artist website | Back to top
Chango Spasiuk (Friday, Saturday)
Accordionist Chango Spasiuk is a leader in contemporary chamamé (a distinctly Argentinean musical genre), much the way Astor Piazzola brought new audiences to tango. Says Spasiuk, “Chamamé songs blend melancholy and happiness together. It’s a music with many levels: like an onion, you peel off layers and find real lives inside it.” Sponsored by IU Center for Latin & Caribbean Studies
Artist website | Back to top
Toubab Krewe (Friday, Saturday)
Working from Malian, American, and “Dirty South” influences, the instrumental quintent Toubab Krewe developed their sound over the course of numerous extended trips to West Africa, where they studied and performed with masters such as Lamine Soumano, Vieux Kante, Madou Dembele, and Koungbanan Conde. “[A] new standard for fusions of rock ‘n’ roll and West African music” (Afropop Worldwide). Sponsored by IU African Studies
Artist website | Back to top
Classic reggae from a Rastaman from the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. Weekes grew up in a family of 10 children and addresses the subjects familiar to reggae aficionados: poverty and social injustice, balanced by faith and hope. Sponsored by IU Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies
Artist website | Back to top
Dhafer Youssef (Friday, Saturday)
Youssef is a Tunisian vocalist and oud player whose music “juxtaposes the ancient, mystical, hypnotic music of Islamic Sufism with the textures of electric jazz” (Time Out). His virtuosic vocal improvisations—which, like jazz scat improv, transcend language—are breathtaking. Youssef's oud playing is equally remarkable. "If I'd been born in Africa," he says, "I'd have been a drummer. In New York, a sax player. But I was born in Tunisia—I play the oud." In Europe, he discovered jazz and classical music, and the artistic combinations with the music of his home country have yielded a sound described as "thrilling," "meditative," "emotional," and "achingly beautiful." Sponsored by IU African Studies
Artist website | Back to top
Lotus Education & Arts Foundation | Box 1667, Bloomington IN 47402 | ph 812-336-6599, fx 336-3959 | lotus@bluemarble.net