Word: bandness
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...very hot - summer's night in Maputo's train station, and nobody's going anywhere. And that's just the way they want it. On a flatbed train car, under the latticed arches designed by Gustave Eiffel, Ghorwane, a local band that have been fusing African rhythms with politics since the early '80s, are shaking up a cocktail of sweaty fans. It's buzzing, but it's not full - not everybody in Mozambique's capital can afford the $6 door fee at Sr Mfumo Jazz Bar (formerly Chez Rangel). Most people still get by on just $40 a month...
...there was a glittering, reptilian brilliance to his madness. A line from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness kept running through my head. "Exterminate the brutes." He was Mr. Kurtz gone insane in the jungle. He was anxious to start the interview. His scouts had run down a band of leftist guerrillas, and Casta?o wanted to go and personally exterminate them. He had a blood debt to avenge...
...pass up," says Park Hun Pyo, the group's manager. Their first two albums were top-5 hits in Korea, and they're getting props overseas, too: they appeared in concert with Boyz II Men in Korea last year. A third album, due out in October, will showcase the band's increasing versatility, adding more uptempo numbers to go with the emotional ballads for which they're best known. One other change: the ladies are messing with their signature look by, heaven forbid, dieting. But as Big Mama has proven, it's the size of the voice that really counts...
Although its jumping-off point is the legendary Big Bands of a half-century ago--Basie, Woody Herman, Stan Kenton--the Phat Band mixes in rock, R&B and Latin to achieve what Goodwin, 51, calls "a contemporary energy and focus and edge." Amazingly, it works for high school and college kids who, if they have ever heard of the swing era, probably think it occurred between the Paleozoic and the Mesozoic. Half of the Phat Band's live appearances are at schools and colleges. The group's range and appeal to all ages are on full display...
Goodwin continues to pursue studio projects. He won a Grammy for an arrangement in last year's The Incredibles, and this year he has orchestrated and conducted the scores for Snakes on a Plane and The Guardian. But the Phat Band has become a cause for him, if not quite a career. After all, with his exuberant, missionary zeal, he is advancing a vital tradition. At a Phat Band concert a year ago at the Santa Monica Pier in Southern California, one appreciative listener was the venerated arranger-composer Johnny Mandel, 80, who wrote for the likes of Basie, Herman...