When the musicians appeared on stage and began to play, the audience went wild, captivated by a magic combination of Hindu and Oriental Arab music, complimented by genuine jazz fusion. One simply lacked physical strength to endure all of it; one’s heart was singing with a multitude of low range strings and thundering bass drums...
Thus began a concert of the famous British group Transglobal Underground in the October Palace. The magic formulas of monotonous methrorhythmical and harmonious sequences had their shaman-like effect. It began with the sitar-player Shima and two men at the drums joining efforts to produce their ritual concoction. In the middle of the first composition, an poker-faced and heavily athletic “black marble statue” slowly floated onstage. Tuup by name, the group’s vocalist, he manned the bongos and began to sing in a “simple enigmatic voice.” He sang in a high and seemingly common timbre, reciting a soap opera story, combining Arab and African intonations (he originates from British Guiana, a Latin American country where folk tunes are still preserved the way they were when brought there centuries ago, spared the ravages of time, owing to the maintenance of a closed community jealously keeping its religious rites and traditions. Shima played her sitar and bass guitar in a singularly bewitching manner, sitting barefoot, handling the instruments in a sure masculine manner, combining raggae, English ballad, Arab spices, and intonational finesse in her improvisations.
The group’s world fusion style includes a variety of music trends and ethnic colorations. Among the musicians is a Jew, Arab, and European. The made separate compositions sound wonderfully ecstatic, so much so people in the audience found themselves grinding their teeth, by combining African melodious overtones with interesting, fresh timbre approaches. Tuup, the tall handsome bongo-player and singer, clad in a gorgeous national costume, tried to established a relaxed and at the same ecstatic contact with the audience, but there was no feedback.
Simple harmonic combinations, two or three chords repeated over and over a hundred times, incorporated in a simply rhythmic formula, very quickly got the audience high as a sky. Their music belonged with the subconscious, yet no one wanted anything else, for that music made everybody happy. At times, the power of their drive reached the strength of ten aircraft motors... The musicians had by then also received a strong impetus, so much so that one could discern elements of punk jazz in their renditions. Some “intellectuals” in the audience, especially those in the front row, started leaving the audience, no longer able to withstand the decibels. Eighty percent of the audience began shaking and nodding, willingly succumbing to the music formulas ruling their subconscious. It was all happening at the physiological level, but it was all kept at the highest quality level; it was a skillfully, professionally adjusted musical philosophy. Good music was abundant, but the simpler people in the audience got high on it and were no longer listening to the content, only waiting for another onslaught, whereupon they would take off their shirts and start waving them overhead. The aisles were jammed with dancing people. Toward the end, Transglobal switched to simple unpretentious dance music. In actuality, that concert, organized by Eric’s Family, was not a concert but a gorgeous dance party. Listening to them, jumping and dancing to their tunes, I thought it was time to go to the Pressing Irons.
