The best week of music in New York City

For 20 years, Winter Jazzfest and GlobalFEST have brought hundreds of the world's greatest players to town in bleakest January.

The holiday buzz has abated; the hangovers (familial or otherwise) have been nursed; the wounds licked. The second week of January can be rough — particularly in New York, where the weather rarely helps. The subways: cold, damp, nasty.

But for the past two decades, two conjoined music festivals have saved our asses. Sure, there’s good music all the time in New York City. But these events bring so many great international artists to town, I’d argue it’s reliably the single best week for live music in New York City all year. And I believe post-holiday hotel rates are lower than usual, too.

The main event, Winter Jazzfest, sprawled over a full 7 days this year, anchored by the signature two-day music marathon — a club crawl that’s moved from its historic West Village/East Village map to a double-header spanning Manhattan and Brooklyn. For this year’s coverage, I refer you to Peter Orlov at Dada Strain and Nate Chinen at The Gig, two Jazzfest vets who are also among Substack’s best music writers, particularly on jazz. (NB: Bret Sjerven also posted a very good account.)

The focus of this New Music + Old Music newsletter is GlobalFEST, an event I’ve been attending for pretty much its entire lifespan, from the early days at Joe’s Pub, to Webster Hall and the one-off at the Copacabana. This was the third year of its apotheosis at Lincoln Center, New York City’s high-art campus, in David Geffen Hall, the former Avery Fisher Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic.

At a moment when nationalism is getting uglier and more divisive in many places, America included, with isolationism part of the sales pitch, GlobalFEST feels more important that ever. Co-founded by Isobel Soffer (who also runs The Local, a like-minded venue in the mid-Hudson Valley) and Bill Bragin, two dedicated New York City-rooted culture workers, GlobalFEST operates on the old-fashioned premise that cultural exchange promotes understanding, cooperation, value-sharing, perhaps even world peace. Bragin quoted a participant noting that the arts are “a place to rehearse the world we want to live in.” That’s always made sense to me.

The festival isn’t averse to using the term “world music,” a marketing designation that’s problematic in ways, but useful too. (See Joe Boyd’s essential new book And the Roots of Rhythm Remain for much more on this.) The aesthetic of the festival — which like Winter Jazzfest, is partly a showcase for talent bookers in town for the annual APAP conference — might be described as global fusion. But nevermind shorthand terminology. Think music grounded in regional traditions, but not bound by them, making magic by engaging dialog with the wider world, like most good art, culture, and politics too, if I may be so bold.

The GlobelFEST curation is so dependable, I like to skip my usual pre-game research and be surprised. Exhibit A: Bamba Wassalou Groove, a guitar band from Mali who my casual post-show reporting suggests was the festival favorite. In terms of hypnotic danceability and electric guitar fireworks, they were definitely mine.

As an unrepentant Deadhead and psychedelic rock fan, West African guitar bands of the ‘60s and ‘70s recorded some of my favorite music of all time — NB: the first concert I took my daughter to, at age two, was an outdoor set by Senegal’s Orchestra Baobab in Central Park in 2003. Bamba Wassalou Groove are a spinoff of two legendary Malian crews: the Super Djata Band, w/ hot shit guitarist Zani Diabaté, and the Super Rail Band, a longstanding affair that gave singers Salif Keita and Mory Kante their start. BWG is a five-piece with twin guitars. Mamadou "Bainy" Diabaté is the rock star, who’s ability to play wicked solos while spinning in circles is beyond my comprehension. Moussa Diabaté is the elder statesman, chilling next to the drummer while peeling off fantastical riffs. Together, their guitar lines ouroboros into the grooves like a foundation drill on a construction site, while the rhythm section (Aboubacar "Papis" Diombana and Maguett Diop) excavates mightily. Frontman Ousmane Diakité, who knows how to work a crowd, has a great howl, a sly witch-doctor vibe, and knows how to use a toy bullhorn. Here’s a full set from a festival in the Netherlands, and a music video for some Malian hometown context.

Elida Almeida, from Santiago, Cape Verde, was my other favorite discovery at GlobalFEST. She occasionally (and inevitably) recalls Cesária Évora, the queen of Cape Verde song, but Almeida’s a modern pop singer with a mastery of many styles, with plenty of Portuguese and Brazilian traditions in the mix. Here’s a clip from Sunday