TWO BIG BANDS HIT THE STAGE AT THE DANCE HALL-Shango Afro-Pop Orchestra and The State-Line Big Band


  • March 18, 2014

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Kittery, ME- Two bands with big sounds will be raising the roof at The Dance Hall on the last weekend of March. The monthly 4TH FRIDAY FORUM on March 28 at 8pm will feature Shango Afro-Pop Orchestra in an homage to the legendary Fela Kuti, a Nigerian musician whose life and music was immortalized in the Broadway hit FELA! 

On Saturday, March 29 at 7:30pm, Chris Klaxton and The State-Line Big Band makes its debut featuring the some of the finest musicians on the Seacoast. 

Fela Kuti was Nigeria's James Brown, Bob Marley, Dr. King, Sly Stone, Malcolm X, and George Clinton all rolled into one super-funky, hilarious, radical activist. He created his very own Afro-Pop sound combining and blending everything he had ever heard, from Yoruba songs and rhythms, to Highlife guitars, to American Jazz and Funk and beyond. And in the African tradition, everybody dances, you can't escape it.  Fela was such an outsize figure it takes four members of Shango (Jonny Peiffer as bandleader, Stu Diaz as vocalist, Matt Langley on tenor saxophone, and Mike Effenberger on keys) to even come close to pulling off what Fela himself was able to do. With horn players, guitars, keyboards, percussion, singers and dancers, Shango is nearly 20 members strong.

Comprised of the Seacoast area's finest instrumentalists, Chris Klaxton and the State-Line Big Band delivers the classic swing/dance band arrangements that we've all come to love, the best of the Great American Songbook, the works of George Gershwin, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Charles Mingus, as well as original material written by the Seacoast's own. An ensemble teeming with creative improvisers, the State-Line Big Band is not only for those looking for a sentimental evening of classic dance music, but for die-hard jazz lovers and fans of bebop and beyond. 

"We haven't had a weekend like this since we opened." says Drika Overton, founder and director of The Dance Hall, "I can't think of a better way to kick off our 3rd anniversary celebration month!"

Tickets are $12 in advance and $15 at the door and can be purchased at RiverRun Bookstore, Wallingford Square, Kittery or at

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/browse.html

 

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Drika Overton

The Dance Hall
7 Walker Street
Kittery  ME  03904 

207/703-2083
moc.liamg@notrevoakird
www.thedancehallkittery.org