Bombino wows the latter day brie-and-chablis crowd at Crystal Ballroom on Tuesday, 19 September 2023.

Global Arts Live kicks off its 2023/2024 season of international sounds and sensations.

What is Global Arts Live?

Global Arts Live is the latest incarnation of a decades-long project to bring world arts and culture to Boston and beyond. Founded by Maure Aronson in 1990, so says the self-penned “Our Story” at the website.

What began as an initiative to import international dance events transformed more broadly into a funnel for all types of sounds that fell under the general header “World Music.”

The header (which GAL correctly marks out as ‘dated’ – what’s a genre, anyway?) described a catch-all universe of sounds beyond the pale of what American children with spending money could find for sale at their local record store.

‘World music’ experienced a moment in the ‘90s, as it does every decade or so at the precise moment that the stateside fandom realizes all its most precious popstars are lifting tunes from abroad. “Why not cut out the middleman?” Aronson exclaimed, as he bolted upright in the bubblebath of this fictional anecdote. “Peter Gabriel can go fuck himself!” he cried, as he stormed nude down the hall, balls swinging free like a furious pendulum, and hopped on the rotary phone with bookers across Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Forty years later the dream is still alive, and you can dream it too, either as a GAL member, purchaser of concert pack discounts, or just a one-off attendee on any given night. Hell, if you just want to give them gobs of money for nothing, you can do that too. They might even put you on the board of directors.

The floating series occupies concert halls around the area. Paradise Rock Club, Crystal Ballroom, City Winery, House of Blues, Berklee Performance Center, Somerville Theater, ICA/Boston, The Sinclair, Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre, and Sanders Theatre.

What you’ll notice about that venue list is only a few of the locations are subsidized by Big Academic money or otherwise feed at the beggar’s trough of arts & culture handouts.

What Aronson and Co. has accomplished (if, indeed, he has accomplished it) is to get international music booked and heard in legitimate business establishments. Places that go under if not enough paying customers are walking through the door.

It’s just the way of the world that these types of customers have historically manifested more parochial musical tastes. They like their Peter Gabriels and Paul Simons delivering foreign sounds by the precious spoonful. Don’t ask them to change.

“But maybe the world has changed?” the wet & wily Aronson wondered to himself, scratching his balls, as he hung up one of those motherfucking old-fashioned receivers onto the main unit of one of those motherfucking old-fashioned landline telephones.

Of course the world has changed. And ‘world music’ too. It’s Global Arts Live now, thank you very much.

Now towel off and put on some clothes. This is family entertainment.

Bombino

The Tuareg singer-songwriter Omara "Bombino" Moctar has a more interesting life story than yours. But don’t take it personally! Fleeing revolution and social unrest is nothing to brag about unless you're the type who wore Che Guevara t-shirts in college. It was a fact of life for the young musician who fled Niger during the Tuareg Rebellion for neighboring Algeria around the time that Aronson was climbing out of the sudsy tub.

The professional musician’s life is an itinerant one by nature, but Bombino was feeling for his life, not to make a living. A living, though, is what he found. During this period a visiting relative left behind a guitar (thanks, Wikipedia!) and the rest is a rather star-studded history of international touring, including collabs, opening slots, and namechecks courtesy of Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Dan Auerbach (of Black Keys), Bonnaroo, Robert Plant, Amadou & Mariam, Gogol Bordello, Newport Folk Festival and David Longstreth (of Dirty Projectors).

By 2023 Bombino was more than prepared for a modestly-sized music hall in Davis Square on a Tuesday night.

The bandleader arrived with a group of four musicians to deliver a few folk morsels of ethnomusicological adventure of the Sahel sound, alongside heaping ladlefuls of more contemporary-influenced electrified rock n roll.

Banks of keys, at least two electric guitars, a bass, an acoustic, a drum kit and something like a djembe. Bombino led the group through some acoustic numbers, paying homage to the more traditional sounds of the homeland.

To the American ear, the key signifier of Sahel folk guitar is the repetition of themes in a hypnotic progression that builds, grows, evolves in liminal and subliminal veins. It’s a tradition in which the lead guitar, as we understand it in the contemporary rock n roll vernacular, hardly exists.

Small wonder then that a curious young Bombino was captivated by contemporary pop legends of the six-strings, Jimi Hendrix among others. These Western names and sounds must have been the height of foreign exoticism for a young Tuareg musician eager to learn.

You didn’t hear as much Jimi in the Crystal Ballroom set. But Santana would be a good comparison to draw in. When the group put away the acoustic instruments and strapped on the electric gear, their sound blossomed in that turned-on, rhythm-forward fashion of Santana at his/their best. Wherever Bombino’s guitar led, the rhythm section was already there, clearing the brush underfoot, as it were, to allow the bandleader to sprint ahead.

Plenty of French-language banter between songs. Extra points for giving the French majors in the crowd the opportunity to test their ears after all these years. Reviewing wine menus and ordering cheese plates only gets you so far.

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