6/8, Webster Hall: Amadou & Mariam, Piers Faccini

"I got, like, a workout."
"Didn't I tell you?"
"So, so awesome."

The comments on the way out said all that needed to be said. Failing that, the constant, permeating haze of pot smoke that showered the room from the opening bongo fill let me know that I was certainly in the right place last night. Undoubtedly one of the best concerts I've ever seen. Maybe the best.

I consider myself a fairly big albeit recently-developed Amadou & Mariam fan. Welcome to Mali was certainly one of my two or three favorite albums of 2008; Dimanche a Bamako is simply a few notches below it; and Wati and Sou Ni Tile are both immensely enjoyable--despite lacking the bombastic production of the former two--and rife with great licks. But having said all that--I wasn't sure what the show would be like. First, would the intense studio work that is responsible for much of the greatness of their latest album carry over poorly into a live setting? Check out "La realite." Without knowing better, intuition would tell you it's hard to replicate that in a small club. Second, would the crowd be into it? Ostensibly, this is one of the danciest bands there is; they're made for moving. But it's also an old African couple, both of who are blind. And frontmanship, for lack of a better term, is important (see Plant, Robert). And this brings me to my last inquiry: who, exactly, would be in the crowd? Amadou & Mariam are from "French Africa," yet they make what is called "world" music, which is ostensibly accessible to the entire globe. Now, despite how big I am on A&M, I didn't think the entire world would be there. But I did think, given that I was in New York City, and the group was African, the crowd would be predominantly African-American. (Not that this fact had me "worried" or any nonsense like that, although it did lead me to recall the time that a friend and I saw the undeniably spectacular cinematic adventure Life as the only white people in a packed theater. You get stares.)

But of course, I forgot about all this until I had been standing in Webster Hall for 25 minutes. First up was Piers Faccini, who seems to be an English singer-songwriter with heavy African themes and overtones. I thoroughly enjoyed him--especially this song, "A Storm Is Going to Come." Very bluesy and straightforward, no frills per se; think of Robert Plant's Raising Sand fused with the guys who Robert Plant ripped off to create Raising Sand. Although, toward the end it became obvious how reliant his--Faccini's--live act was on simple, accessible, and good melodies, as he closed with a clunker and just didn't have the stage presence to make it work.

It was at this point, during the set change, that I surveyed the crowd. My grand hypothesis was patently retarded: Everyone was white. Of course, if I had used a shred of logic in my initial theorizing, I could have come to this conclusion too. Tickets went very quickly, which means they were sold primarily on the internet (pro-white bias); tickets, for GA, weren't cheap (pro-white bias); and the show was located at 11th and 4th (um, yeah). So I began sitting, er, standing, there, mostly in eager anticipation of the show, but also in apprehension about whether the crowd was going to be as raging as it might be if it looked like something other than a Palin rally.

The initial theatrics--flashing lights, some egregious stagehand fuck-ups, more flashing lights, thumping bass drum, and then the grand procession that led the blind Amadou & Mariam to the forefront of the stage--put to rest any concerns about audience energy. Put differently, the place went fucking nuts. And it stayed that way for the next 110 minutes, with only a 90-second break before the encore. The place was jumping like mad--and logically so, because A&M is awesome. My production worries were for naught as well; despite the fact that some like to bag on Webster Hall's acoustics, I'm not sure I've ever heard a better-sounding live act. Drums from the gods, a nonstop wall of synthesizer and keyboard chords, congas and bongos that make your fingers bleed even as a listener, and a guitar--Amadou's--that seems to rival those of Jimmy Page, Mick Taylor, and John Petrucci. And the motherfucker wielding it is blind.

It is truly a difficult task to convey the sonic greatness that is Amadou's guitar. Not only does A&M have a very limited song selection available on youtube, but even the songs I would choose from the album to illustrate my point aren't nearly as awesome in the studio as they are live. Sure, there's some nifty multitracking stuff pulled off on Welcome to Mali that could not be done last night without inviting a veritable guitar fleet onstage as a back-up band, but the sheer skill and inventiveness apparent in the solos more than allayed any issues I had with that. A&M is deemed "world music," but a more apt description might be "African Dream Theater." It's sonic overindulgence turned up to eleven, and man, does it work. There isn't a single bad track on Welcome to Mali--indeed, there are probably no fewer than 10 stellar ones--but again I must reiterate, you haven't heard it until you've heard it like I did last night, amidst a pulsing, sweating, and shrieking crowd and inescapable, unending wafts of pot smoke, all while Amadou, incapable of actually seeing the people whose day--nay, week... fuck it, month--he is making, ripped off solos that had Jimi Hendrix's corpse moving his feet.

Beyond essential. I had an hour to kill after the show so I decided to take a walk. Before I knew it, I had gone 60 blocks on pure musical adrenaline.