Description
SECRET PLANET 2024 on Jan, 13 2024 at DROM!
APAP is an annual rite that, every January, brings musicians and music industry professionals to New York City. It is the largest event of its type in the world and brings people from every corner of our planet to the New York winter. The weeklong gathering can be grueling: showcases, conferences, meetings (cold, snow…) and music can sometimes feel like a footnote, or even a commodity.
Secret Planet, rather than an industry showcase, prides itself in focusing on music and the event feels more like a festival than a showcase. Artists come from close and afar. From countries and neighborhoods where English is not always understood and their culture is not always represented on the US stage. Regardless of their cultural or geographical origin, all Secret Planet artists, tend to follow their own vision and not be held back by genre, rules, language, commercial appeal, or concerns of authenticity. They all have in common a creative impulse never impeded by stylistic or cultural boundaries. Secret Planet is also turning into a loose network of East Coast presenters with shared values and esthetics – with various presenters in Western Mass, NY state, Pittsburgh, DC and beyond.
Over the years, Secret Planet has presented close to 80 different groups, including Chicano Batman, Combo Chimbita, Hailu Mergia, Janka Nabai, No BS Brass Band, Flor de Toloache, Las Cafeteras, Alash, Anbessa Orchestra, Innov
Gnawa, Chicha Libre, LADAMA, Underground System, The Debo Band, Alsarah; the Nubatones, Sunny Jain, BCUC, Mdou Moctar, Sofiane Saidi, Yonatan Gat, Slavic Soul Party, and quite a few more.
Shoko Nagai’s TOKALA
https://www.shokonagai.net/shoko-nagais-tokala
Tokala explores the sound of the ancient connection between Japan and the Middle-East via the Silk Road where cultural exchange happened and left an imprint which became integral part of Japanese culture. We can raise awareness of the ancient connection between Far East Asia and Islamic world the middle east.
Shoko Nagai ( accordion / electronics, voice)
Satoshi Takeishi – percussion –
Sita Chay – violin
Frank London – trumpet
BOMBAY RICKEY
Fronted by vocalist and composer Kamala Sankaram, Bombay Rickey counts Ennio Morricone and Yma Sumac as influences and could very well be the soundtrack to a 1960s Bollywood western. Bombay Rickey mixes surf rock, cumbia and coloratura soprano – without resorting to easy pastiche. Bombay Rickey was invited to create an opera cabaret based on the life of Yma
Sumac for the prestigious PROTOTYPE Festival in New York City. The show ran for seven sold-out performances and was hailed as a “rocking musical show” by the Wall Street Journal.
Featuring:
Kamala Sankaram – vocals; Drew Fleming – guitar; Jeff Hudgins –
saxophones; Nick Cudahy – bass and Brian Adler -drums
LOBOKO
https://nyctrust.bandcamp.com/album/kanyunyi
Loboko features young Congolese vocalist and guitar virtuoso Yohni Djungu Sungu, alongside Soukouss-Stars legend and master bassist in his own right, Ngouma Lokito. The group is rounded out by drummer and co-founder Morgan Greenstreet. Yohni and Morgan helped spawn the group’s few but raucous NYC live appearances with various members throughout a couple year period before 2020. They released their first single on Names You Can Trust a few months ago. The music is raw and new, playing with traditional Congolese rhythms and the transatlantic pulse that reverberates throughout the Caribbean – and now New York City.
This is a rare appearance –
COMBO DAGUERRE
http://combodaguerre.com/
After dealing in mostly Latin tropical styles for over a decade, with the psychedelic cumbia of his band Chicha Libre in particular, Brooklyn based Olivier Conan now leads Combo Daguerre, a group that performs original French tunes with a psychedelic edge and a mostly Latin crew. Its hybrid style is informed by boleros, cumbia, cha chas, 60's rock, French chanson and 1930s surrealism – and its music is filled with joy and darkness, deep grooves and dirges, nostalgia and futurism – with songs, both joyous and serious, deal with exile, misplaced nostalgia and a language adulterated by distance.
With Olivier Conan (Chicha Libre) – cuatro, vocals; Adele Fournet – keyboards
and Felipe Wurst – guitar (Banda Chuska/Tipa Tipo); Andres Fonseca – drums;
Neil Ochoa (Los Crema Paraiso, Chicha Libre) – percussion and Dan Martinez –
bass.
LA PERLA
https://laperlabogota.bandcamp.com/album/callejera
La Perla from Bogotá, is a voice and percussion trio made up of Karen Forero, Giovanna Mogollón and Diana Sanmiguel. For over 15 years, the three women have been researching the musical traditions of the Caribbean coast – Gaitas and tambor , bullerengue, cumbia, bailes cantados – and their repertoire reflects both their deep knowledge of those traditions, and their talent at composing new pieces based on tradition. La Perla has toured extensively in Europe and Latin America, and their song La Bruja was featured in the Netflix series Siempre Bruja.
CUMBIA HEIGHTS
https://www.facebook.com/cumbiaheightsdc/
Cumbia Heights is a self-described cumbia-immigrante band from Washington DC. Their lively shows shows attract an enthusiastic crowd ready to engage and surrender to the spirit of cumbia. From the wider immigrant community in DC, friends and colleagues casually got together to play some tropical music from back home and quickly became a band in demand, crisscrossing the district and lighting up dance floors in the parks, in backyards, and the clubs. .
DJ DISCOLOCAS
https://www.instagram.com/discolocas/
A Brooklyn-based collective of vinyl selectahs, empowering women through music on vinyl.