Houston Chronicle Tuesday, April 23, 2002
By MICHAEL D. CLARK
On Sunday the Houston
International Festival took thousands of attendees
around the world in seven hours.
Discovered along the way were some Texans
and Frenchmen who can pick guitars
and stroke fiddles like magicians.
Saturday’s opening concerts
featured African artists the Mahotella Queens
and Cheikh Lo, as well as a Gulf Coast blues jam featuring
Clarence “Gatemouth”
Brown, Kenny Neal and Sonny
Landreth. Sunday’s were full of gypsy
jams and
Texas swing.
The Gypsies may sound like
European musicians influenced by the vagabond
strings of Django Reinhardt and
Stephane Grappelli. They are actually Houstonians
led by accordion player Greg Haebor,
who is of Byelorussian descent.
Playing at the festival’s
French-Atlantic Bistro and Cabaret (an open-air café
and a huge improvement over the
tightly packed Irish Pub on the same corner last
year), the seven-man ensemble
converged on French, Russian and Macedonian
gypsy folk music that could have
passed as authentic.
Twin djimbe drums propelled
the polyrhythms of No No Naly Gaje, as a
westernnized electric bass kept time
on descending bass scales. Harbor’s accordion
was a wide-grinning engine pushing
the melody forward.
The klezmer trot of 7.40 a.m.
was juiced by a clarinet not held to traditional
rules of improvisational chord
progression. Others were drinking songs or rural heel-
to-toe folk tunes --- the joyous
sounds that make one want to shake a tambourine
and yell “Hey”. on the chorus.
As skilled the Gypsies were,
one could see them morph into fans while waiting
for a performance by southern France
quartet Latcho Drom.
Led by Romanian violin player
Florin Niculescu, lead guitarist Christophe
Lartilleux, rhythm guitarist
Philippe Cuillerier and standing bass player Joël Trolonge,
Latcho Drom may be one of the
finest, quickest and most deft all-string ensembles in
the world.
The group is also driven by
the gypsy jazz of Reinhardt, but the dexterity of
Lartilleux and Niculescu (who has played with Reinhardt prodigy
Bireli Lagrene and
on several Reinhardt tributes) make
the interplay sound nearly classical. Between
them, they have 20 strings that at
times sound like an entire symphony.
“We are poor musicians and we
sell CDs,” said bassist Trolonge in English that
was better than most of the
listeners’ French. “We hope to see you at the end of the
show.”
I’m no pitchman, but Latcho
Drom’s Live 2001 CD, available at the festival’s
mobile Cactus Records outlet, is one
of the best gifts ears could ever hope for.
The afternoon’s cabaret
all-stars amplified anticipation of a Franco-Texan finale
jam, with members of the Gypsies and
Latcho Drom teaming with the Texas Playboys
and Asleep at the Wheel on the stage.
The Playboys started
things off with a set of traditional Western swing, reminding
the elderly about and introducing
the young to the origins of popular American music.
Starring Johnny Gimble
on fiddle, the ensemble ran through many Bob Wills standards,
incorporating fiddle and guitar
improvisations like a jazz group.
Asleep at the Wheel,
possibly the most loyal descendents of Wills’ swing, must
have been inspired by Gimble and co.
Led by Ray Benson, the Wheel isn’t as conservative,
but its penchant for extended string
noodling is a direct inheritance.
Riffing on everything from
the Townes Van Zandt ballad If I Needed You to
Commander Cody’s Hot Rod Lincoln,
the Wheel played a full hour-and-45-minute set.
This was one the Texas show.
Maybe it was too hot and Texas. After stepping
toward the stage, the French
musicians assembled backstage for the jam never had the
chance to strum a note. Big finish
or no, it was hard to feel cheated.