Try and imagine Frank Zappa & Les Claypool hanging in a tribal drum circle being recorded for a National Geographic special at Bonnaroo.
There is a lot on this record. There’s a lot of mirth, a lot of emotion, a lot of people, a lot of instruments, a lot of creativity, a lot of vocabulary words, a lot of time changes, influences, languages, child’s play, nonsense, and even a few cheeseburgers and a bit of pesto. Sound crazy? Wait til you hear it. The cover photo shows six people but the depth of these arrangements makes it sound like more.
Trying to describe Brevard Busking Coalition to the uninitiated is like trying to describe ceviche to an octopus but it’s easy to get carried away on these BBC beats…
There are probably over forty instruments listed in the credits. They range from wooden frog to Fanta bottle to ukulele and beyond. More traditional instruments appear as well. There’s guitar, bass, and drum kits but they function as more of a foundation for the frogs and Fanta bottles to jump and sputter and spray around on. Interestingly, the musicians, or magicians, or buskers, or artists, or whatever this
collective calls their members, or guests, or whatever they are, are listed only by lower case initials: db; djembe – a; big bass drum – tm; agogo bells etc. Obviously this product is not about the people, it’s about the thing. It’s about an opening. It’s about a place to be.
This is more than a record, it’s an invitation. The opening track, ‘fanga alafia’ is a sort of sideways remake of a traditional Liberian song ‘Funga Alafia’. It’s a song of welcome and the Liberian lyrics loosely translate to “I welcome you with my mind, my voice, my heart…” BBC uses English lyrics as well as the Liberian and the song delivers a strong message of multi-cultural unity and peace.
Of the ten tracks on the disc three are titled after foods though the lyrics don’t necessarily speak of food, some of this stuff is downright sarcastic! The words and vocal layers on ‘pesto’, while certainly gypsy inflected, don’t conjure to mind something you’d order at your local Italian eatery. ‘cheeseburger, cheeseburger’ is a protest song about the agricultural industry and definitely not a celebration of one of
America’s signature food. The rhythms bring to mind another modern gypsy band, System of a Down, but the delivery is 180 degrees away from that groups Eastern Euro metal.
BBC stresses a wide range of acoustic sounds. Though not strictly a food name, track #4, ‘mycelium’, (the vegetative part of a fungus), probably the rocking-est track on the record, moves along at more of a Primus beat.
The production is clean and consistent from start to finish and the strong separation of all of the acoustic instruments make It Will Come Back To You a very engaging listen. Every small cymbal or string has room to breathe while still working along with the rest of the ensemble. Congratulations to the sound engineers. This much sonic definition with this many instruments is not easy to achieve.
Grab a frog, a kazoo, a bongocongodrummywhatsitthingy and who knows? You might end up on the next record.
They obviously don’t call it a Coalition for nothing.