Tabla Beat Science

The seekers begin to gather in the shadows of the Marina Towers, converging from all directions to the north bank of the Chicago river. The crowd arrives in twos and threes, with the occasional loner strolling up amidst the multitude of cabs and cars ascending the spiral incline that marks the entrance to the House of Blues. There is a certain excited expectancy in the step of those who have come on foot, their approach is marked with body language that speaks volumes about how the promise of rhythm manifests in those who find their meanings in music. The crowd is an interesting cocktail - brown skins and white dreads, turbaned professionals, middle aged first generation immigrants, DJs and musicians of all creeds and colors, blissed out bourgeois fashionistas, respectable bespectacled minds, and a veritable horde of fine desi women who I'd like to take home to meet my mother. All kinds of folks have turned up.

Walking the main floor of the concert hall, you sense the generations of listeners around you - the depth of their appreciation is tangible. Next to you is a refined connoisseur who was introduced to Zakir Hussain's recordings via Shakti in the 1970's, and in front of you is a bobbing 19 year-old college student enraptured by the communion unfolding in front of her eyes. It's a good mix of people, with a collective awareness that reaches far beyond the limits of any single culture. The crowd is a vivid tapestry of overlapping languages and schools of thought, all of us anticipating an experience that will reconfigure our notions of musical identity.

DJ Warp and Radiohiro ease into the evening with reggae cuts and the occasional throbbing Asian underground classic. Long a fixture on the Chicago music scene, they're old hands at the task of warming up a crowd, both DJs equally adept at throwing down furious drum n'bass sets or seducing a fickle Chicago audience with lush international soundscapes. Their selection of sounds this evening is down tempo and deliberately restrained, but ripe with the prospect of the legends soon to grace the stage. The crowd is anxious, as friends seek out their companions and try to locate the optimal viewing spots from around the concert hall. The room begins to feel full.
At 9:45 the curtains draw back to reveal a stage filled with Abyssinia Infinite, a motley ensemble of veteran musicians whose 2003 release "Zion Roots" infuses traditional Ethiopian songs with African gospel stylings and impeccable production techniques. Ejigayehu "Gigi" Shibabaw holds court in the center of the stage, smiles out a benediction at the audience, and then begins to sing over a lush atmospheric bed of horns, keys, and congas. There is a gravity to Gigi's vocals that is ethereal yet earthy, she sings of Abyssinia in its own ancient tongues, the languages of Amharic and Agewna, with the occasional English lyric woven into the mix. Gigi's vocal inflections are rooted in the traditional music of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and when framed against this ensemble's organic percussion and electronic washes of noise, she sounds like a genuine Nubian priestess equipped with a vision for the digital era.

After a few minutes of spacious, patient exposition by Gigi and her cohorts, Bill Laswell turns up on stage to drop the bass into the mix. He straps his instrument on, paces a quick circuit, then promptly starts to riff with the incomparable Hamid Drake, who's holding down the core beat on a drum kit. The two kick out a heavy-handed groove, which evolves from song to song into an entire set of intense, penetrating afro-funk. The crowd soaks up the refined blend of Abyssinia Infinite, as the bass embraces the main floor from the bottom up and the band begins to stretch out and trade solos. The spectacle is almost as dizzying as the sound.

A few tracks into the set a guest artist appears on the right side of the stage, wielding a white Gibson Les Paul guitar and with a freakish Mike Myers mask concealing his entire face. This is the notorious Buckethead, a sought-after session musician and a revered underground performer, and he makes several quick cameos over the course of the evening to provide an array of tightly compressed guitar solos. Buckethead leaves a deep visual and auditory impression, but he is hardly the only memorable face in this cast of characters. My gaze is drawn towards the tenor saxophonist, an inscrutably intense elder black man with ancient eyes, a high forehead framed by wisps of frizzy white hair, and an aura of severity and grace about him. Gigi introduces him a few songs later, after a handful of incredible solos, and it turns out this horn player is the jazz patriarch Pharaoh Sanders. He wasn't even listed on the bill, but apparently Bill Laswell, with the most enviable rolodex of any producer on the planet, and can summon forth quite a cast to sit in with his band at the touch of a dial. The rest of Abyssinia Infinite's set goes by in a blur of solos and heavy bass textures, and they depart the stage to resounding applause from an enthralled crowd. People are still arriving.

When the curtains part again the members of Tabla Beat Science are spread out across the stage in staggered layers and small risers. The band weaves together its inimitable layers of rhythm and tone, slowly at first, and then picking up pace as each instrument introduces itself into the conversation. Ustad Sultan Khan is an immediate stage presence, his nuanced vocal flights handily paired with intricately bowed sarangi phrases that escalate into frenzied stabbing climaxes. Karsh Kale beats out a deft and elaborate rhythmic skeleton, which Zakir Hussain and DJ disk explore while trading fills and extended phrases. Selim Merchant colors the space with lush washes of texture from his keyboards, while Bill Laswell toys with his pedals and projects a tangible wall of bass into the room that you can feel filling the very pores of your skin. Hours after the show I can still feel the bass in me, a residual energy that refuses to let my body surrender easily to the folds of sleep. Some sounds leave traces of themselves embedded so deep that your reaction to their vitality is delayed, and only becomes apparent after the music has ceased. So it is with Laswell's bass: he dishes it out in wave after wave of noise that you initially perceive from the bottom up, but which your mind must process later, after the immediacy wears off...

The concert is filled with highlights, conversational exchanges, calls and responses, dynamic shifts and solos that cumulatively comprise an incredible convergence of musical paths. When you have masters of this capacity trading techniques and skills with each other, the alchemy is fluid, inevitable, and undeniable. Over the course of the evening the mood in the room shifts, as everyone is swept up and savoring the caliber of the skills bouncing around the room. The band is having fun as well, obviously relishing the chance to play with old friends they rarely perform with. Gigi and Zakir trade 8 bars of bol-scatting in between giggles. Dj Disc, Karsh, & Zakir barter blistering breakbeats. Ustad Sultan Khan and Gigi vocalize careful overlapping harmonies. Laswell and Buckethead push the thresholds of tone and volume. By the time the group begins the first phrases of "Satellite (Show me the worth of the world)", most of the crowd is riveted. The worth of the world seems to be unfolding before our eyes, in the shapes of these masterful musicians refuting the limitations of their human differences in favor of pushing the boundaries of community beyond the constraints of language and culture. In a world thick with the fragmented static of warring ideas and confused civilizations, it is revitalizing to experience the simple clarity that comes from people united in rhythm, regardless of their races, their creeds, or their origins. Tabla Beat Science represents a musical culmination that dispenses with centuries of cultural distrust and misunderstanding in favor of pursuing a solidarity born from the evolved awareness that we all ultimately emerged from the same primordial rhythms.     

- Fuad Ahmad