{"id":42982,"date":"2019-05-25T08:25:36","date_gmt":"2019-05-25T12:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=42982"},"modified":"2019-05-25T08:25:44","modified_gmt":"2019-05-25T12:25:44","slug":"on-stage-take-the-less-traveled-musical-path-this-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=42982","title":{"rendered":"On Stage: Take the less-traveled musical path this weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Denny Dyroff, <\/span><\/strong>Entertainment Editor, The Times<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

RAM<\/p><\/div>\n

If you\u2019re in the mood to hear live music that is different\u2026music that you don\u2019t usually hear on the internet or radio\u2026then there are two music acts performing in Philadelphia this weekend that you should check out \u2013 RAM and Joe Moffett.<\/span><\/p>\n

RAM, which is performing on May 26 at Myst Lounge (5835 Rising Sun Avenue, Philadelphia, 267-686-4101), is a Haitian Music band based in the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Founded in 1990, the band derives its name from the initials of its founder, songwriter, and lead male vocalist — Richard A. Morse.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy mom is from Haiti and my dad is from Connecticut,\u201d said Morse, during a phone interview Thursday afternoon as he travelled from Charlottesville, Virginia to a gig at John and Peter\u2019s in New Hope.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up in Connecticut, but I\u2019ve been in Haiti since 1985. I\u2019m a musician and I went down there looking for rhythm. It turned out to be a goldmine of inspiration.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

RAM<\/span> has been producing quality music for more than 25 years. Recently, RAM released its seventh album, \u201cAugust 1791.\u201d On the album, ancient African and Haitian drums intertwine harmoniously with electric guitar riffs and swinging Caribbean melodies. The band is fronted by highly acclaimed Haitian singer Lunise Morse.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cShortly after I got to Haiti, Jean-Claude (\u201cPresident for Life\u201d Jean-Claude Duvalier aka \u201cBaby Doc\u201d) left,\u201d said Morse. \u201cI didn\u2019t know if I should stay or leave. I got a job at the Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince \u2013 where I eventually took over.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWith the band, my wife opened the door for me because I had a hard time getting people to understand what I wanted to do. It started with a drum line and then we added bass and guitar and turned it into a band. We started playing at the hotel in 1991.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If you made your way to Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince almost any Thursday over the last 28 years, you would have been greeted by the raw and powerful music of RAM — ancient folkloric polyrhythms intertwining harmoniously with punk rock guitar riffs and swinging Caribbean melodies. It is at these now legendary sweat-drenched gigs where RAM established themselves at torchbearers of a Vodou rock sound.<\/span><\/p>\n

Firmly rooted in a city that has seen much political upheaval, RAM has been a target of regime censorship, and has continued to be a voice for the people of Haiti throughout upheaval and change.\u00a0 One of the prominent bands in the mizik rasin musical movement, the band incorporates traditional vodou lyrics and instruments, such as rara horns into modern styles. The band performs in Haitian Creole, French, and English.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rasin is a musical style that began in Haiti in the 1970s when musicians began combining elements of traditional Haitian Vodou ceremonial and folkloric music with rock and roll. This style of modern music reaching back to the roots of Vodou tradition came to be called mizik rasin (\u201croots music\u201d) in Haitian Creole or musique racine in French.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe got our push to fame when we had a song on the \u2018Philadelphia\u2019 soundtrack,\u201d said Morse.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPhiladelphia,\u201d the 1993 movie that starred Tom Hanks, had a stellar soundtrack with songs by Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Sade, the Neville Brothers, Maria Callas and Peter Gabriel. It also featured a song by RAM called \u201cIbo Lele (Dreams Come True).\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe also had songs that took off because of social issues in Haiti,\u201d said Morse.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1992, RAM began regularly playing a song entitled \u201cF\u00e8y,\u201d the Creole word for \u201cleaf.\u201d The lyrics for the song were of Vodou folkloric origins, adapted to rasin music. Despite no overt references to the political situation, it was widely played on the radio and immediately taken up throughout the country as an unofficial anthem of support for Jean-Bertrand Aristide.<\/span><\/p>\n

In December 1990, Aristide, a former Catholic priest, was elected President in the Haitian general election. In September of the following year, Aristide was overthrown by the military in the 1991 Haitian coup d’\u00e9tat.<\/span><\/p>\n

By the summer of 1992, playing or singing the song was banned under military authority, and Morse was subjected to death threats from the regime. In one particular instance, Morse was summoned before Evans Fran\u00e7ois, the brother of Colonel Michel Fran\u00e7ois, who told Morse that any number of assassins would be willing to kill him for as little as fifty cents in payment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Undaunted, RAM continued to play \u201cF\u00e8y\u201d live at their weekly concerts at the Oloffson. The band would later document the Fran\u00e7ois death threat in the mixed-language ballad \u201cGran Bwa,\u201d released in 1997 on its second album, \u201cPuritan Vodou.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018F\u00e8y\u2019 came out and that was totally huge,\u201d said Morse. \u201cWe became huge in the Haitian music scene with our mizik rasin.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMizik Rasin is all I know. But I don\u2019t even call it mizik rasin \u2013 I call it Haitian music. Making this music is all I do. Once I discovered this, nothing else interested me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Moore may be a light-skinned Haitian-American from Connecticut but his link to Haitian roots music is real.<\/span><\/p>\n

His father, Richard M. Morse, was an American academic sociologist and writer, and his mother, Emerante de Pradines (1918-2018), was a famous Haitian singer, dancer and folklorist — and the daughter of Haitian entertainer Auguste de Pradines.<\/span><\/p>\n

Auguste Linstant de Pradines, also known as Ti Candio or Kandjo, was an influential Haitian musician who largely created the archetype of the Haitian troubadour. Over nearly five decades, de Pradines composed love songs as well as songs of political and social commentary.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up with this stuff,\u201d said Morse, who has a degree in anthropology from Princeton University. \u201cMy mom made two albums of Vodou music and creole songs of Haiti.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNow, RAM is making music of Haiti. We play a lot in Haiti and have done around 150 shows in the U.K. We\u2019ve only recently started to tour in the United States. My son (William Morse) is a guitarist in the band and he wants to tour.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Video link for RAM \u2013 https:\/\/youtu.be\/tnEUfbwSEQc<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The show at Myst Lounge will start at 9 p.m. Tickets are $25.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Joe Moffett<\/p><\/div>\n

You\u2019ve never heard music like the music Joe Moffett will be performing this weekend \u2013 because neither has Moffett.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an improvising trio and the three of us haven\u2019t done anything together before \u2013 not even rehearse,\u201d said Moffett, during a phone interview Tuesday from his home in Brooklyn.<\/span><\/p>\n

On May 25, Fire Museum Presents will have a show at The Random Tea Room (713 North Fourth Street, Philadelphia, http:\/\/firemuseumpresents.com<\/a>) featuring Joe Moffett performing in a trio that also features Zach Rowden and John McCowen.<\/span><\/p>\n

New York-\u00adbased trumpeter and improviser Joe Moffett approaches his work with a keen interest in unconventional sounds and forms, collective composition, solo instrumental performance, and the intersection of words and music. He is a regular participant in the improvised\/experimental music scene in Brooklyn and is a co-founder of ensembles such as Earth Tongues, Twins of El Dorado and the Kaplan\/Merega\/Moffett Trio. His material appears on Neither\/Nor, Underwolf, Eh?, NotTwo, and Prom Night Records.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Zach Rowden<\/p><\/div>\n

Zach Rowden deals with the acoustic and performative possibilities of the upright\/electric basses. He is a soloist in Iancu Dumitrescu and the late Ana Maria Avram\u2019s Hyperion Ensemble. Current collaborators include Tyshawn Sorey, Paul Flaherty, Michael Foster\u2019s The Ghost, Robert Black, Chris Cretella, Matt Sargent. Charmaine Lee and Gus Caldwell. Venues that have welcomed him include Harpa (Reykjavik), Romanian Radio Hall (Bucharest), Cafe Oto (London), Heimathafen Neuk\u00f6lln (Berlin), Issue Project Room (New York), Firehouse 12 (New Haven), and Real Art Ways (Hartford).<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

John McCowen<\/p><\/div>\n

John McCowen is a New York based composer and performer whose work focuses on extending the possibilities of the clarinet family. John embraces long-form drones, difference tones, and beating harmonics as a means to extrude the dimensionality within – treating the clarinet as an acoustic synthesizer. His works for ensemble utilize spectral techniques to superimpose the timbral\/sonic characteristics of the clarinet onto a grouping of instruments. This may include the clarinet as a solo instrument while the ensemble functions as a resonant system.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a pretty new trio,\u201d said Moffett. \u201cZach plays bass. John plays contrabass clarinet and I play trumpet. I played with Zach in other contexts and once with John, but this will be a first time for us playing together.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have three shows this weekend \u2013 a house concert in New York on Friday, the Philly show on Saturday and a show Sunday in New Haven, Connecticut.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just a live project, but we do want to record. So, we\u2019re recording the show Sunday in New Haven, which is Zach\u2019s hometown. John moved to New York two years ago from the Bay Area. I\u2019ve been here 10 years. I grew up in a town near Worcester, Massachusetts and graduated from the New England Conservatory in Boston in 2006.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Moffett explained how this weekend\u2019s show came about \u2013 and what to expect.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was talking to Zach about doing some shows in May,\u201d said Moffett. \u201cI got in touch with Steven (Fire Museum Presents founder Steven Tobin) and he was able to find a date for us.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI know Zach\u2019s vocabulary pretty well and I know John\u2019s work. I know what each other\u2019s sounds are. We\u2019ve talked about kinds of sounds an instrument does. We tend to do things on the noisy end of the spectrum. The instrumentation is already bass-heavy so that will be fun. It could be very droney \u2013 but it might not be. It will probably unfold very naturally.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Video link for Joe Moffett \u2013 https:\/\/youtu.be\/hO8xTzcEZRg<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Video link for Zach Rowden and John McCowen — https:\/\/youtu.be\/g6xaVArVTu0<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The show at The Random Tea Room, which also features the Bonnie Lander\/Allison Clendaniel<\/a> Duo, will start at 7 p.m. Tickets are $8-10 sliding scale.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Denny Dyroff, Entertainment Editor, The Times If you\u2019re in the mood to hear live music that is different\u2026music that you don\u2019t usually hear on the internet or radio\u2026then there are two music acts performing in Philadelphia this weekend that you should check out \u2013 RAM and Joe Moffett. RAM, which is performing on May […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8457],"tags":[7426,12193,12192,12194],"class_list":["post-42982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-d-arts-entertainment","tag-featured","tag-joe-moffett","tag-ram","tag-zach-rowden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42983,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42982\/revisions\/42983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}