Jisu Sheen Photo
I-Shea on the Conga, Seny Camara on Jembe, and Douglas Wilson III on guitar.
“The telepathy up here is crazy.”
Jocelyn Pleasant, leader of Connecticut’s well-loved Afro-funk fusion ensemble The Lost Tribe, might have been talking about communication between band members, but she also set the stage for an intimate connection between the band and the audience at a performance Thursday night at NXTHVN in Dixwell.
DJ Stealth at his turntable.
The band’s two sets were filled with repetitions of motifs from West African, Latin American, and Black American cultures. Instruments followed each other’s lead, recreating and transforming every offering. As the record breaks of a turntable echoed rhythms from the drums, DJ Stealth adjusted his headphones so his left ear was sometimes exposed to the sounds of the room, sometimes locked into the beats he was making.
The drum-driven ensemble has performed in recent months in Massachusetts and Rhode Island; their next show is in Vermont. Performing in New Haven, though, especially Dixwell, was something special. Pleasant noted that many of the band members are from Hartford or New Haven, saying about multiple instrumentalists, “We go way back.” In introducing the jembe player, Pleasant repeated, “New Haven’s own Seny Camara!” three times as the crowd celebrated.
Camara later noted how perfectly the band’s combination of cultural influences reflects his own life and upbringing. For generations, his mother’s side of the family has lived in the neighborhood where the band was performing Thursday night.
Camara grew up on salsa and cumbia, influenced by the Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Mexican communities around him. The drums Camara brought to life Thursday were from his father, all the way from Guinea in West Africa. “I mix what I know here with what I know from there,” Camara said with the same big, easy smile he flashed while performing.
Camara’s smile was in good company. The eye contact on stage was itself a performer. The ugliest stank faces from keyboardist Michael Carabello seemed to somehow say the same things as bassist Joel Hewitt’s absolutely calm poker face.
No half-second in the music was lonely. The absences that made up the syncopation of one drum pattern were not empty but filled with rhythms and beats from another. The effect was overwhelming in a way that encouraged the audience to transcend. When the ground is completely covered, where can you go but up?
The crowd was, in Pleasant’s words, “so polite, you got your arms crossed, you got your legs crossed … no no no no no, we’re gonna undo that.” And they did.
Jasmin Agosto, NXTHVN’s programs and exhibitions manager, took a moment to note the small miracle it was to be in the space together, given “all the personal, national, international things we are going through.” It wasn’t just a metaphorical space but a real one, in a real neighborhood. NXTHVN sometimes brings in a crowd that is unfamiliar with Dixwell, or New Haven in general. Agosto was eager to show them the ropes. In introducing the band, her last words were, “For those that don’t know, y’all ’bout to find out.”
Velvety trombone from Nathan Davis came gliding in like the whispers of a love song. Doug Wilson’s rock-and-roll electric guitar indulgences led one audience member to shout “Shredding!” as Pleasant introduced Wilson to the crowd (which Pleasant then echoed, adding it to Wilson’s moniker). The celestial vocals of I‑Shea, belting poetry and song into the mic, draped the stage in a loving glow. At times, one long, sustained note from Carabello would hold all the moving pieces together like the wire in a mobile. When almost all percussion stopped for a moment except for claps and wood on wood, there was a shout of “Wepa!” leading into an inevitable dance break.
The music was full of play. The coy entrances and exits of brass and keyboard formed a game the band was always winning. The band members often broke into smiles, shaking their heads before playing harder. People from the audience laughed out loud, calling out “Ah shit!” in response to the deep tones of the dundun interrupting a lighter call-and-response. From rolling cascades of the keys, the joy the bandmates expressed in each others’ solos, and special guest Corey Hutchins’ impossibly fast tap dancing against the “let loose” call of the cowbell, the show turned into one big party. The members of the band looked at each other with wonder and anticipation like they didn’t know what would come next. And perhaps they didn’t.
Many elements of the show seemed spontaneous. At one point, Pleasant got the idea to start the next song by “build[ing] it from scratch — can we, can we build it from the first piece? Hold on.” She went around to each of the percussion instrumentalists, even the tap dancer, to start their rhythms for them like one candle lighting the rest. As Pleasant explained to the crowd, “We figure it out together, we figure it out together.”
Even when the show was over, it wasn’t over quite yet. After the clapping and closing announcements, the bandmates picked up their instruments one last time to play out the audience as they left.
“We don’t just do it to put it out,” Camara said about the band’s connection with the audience. “We do it because we realize it made us feel good, and we want to share it.” He held his hands out as he talked, drummers’ hands, and it was clear how deep he felt this to be true.
“We have a ball every time.”
NXTHVN’s next event is Saturday, Feb. 22, a Black History Month spoken word show put together by NXTHVN’s high school apprentices.
Douglas Wilson III on guitar and The Lost Tribe leader Jocelyn Pleasant on drums.