African group lacking flair in UM concert

Drums were banging, singers were screaming, and the flowered skirts of dancers were flailing as the African Heritage Tour, a group of performers with various roots in African music and dance, stormed through town Saturday with a show at the Maine Center for the Arts.

The event opened with three songs by Pappa Susso, a Mandinka jali whose job it is to perform music, sing praise and recount tribal history from Gambia. While sitting cross-legged on a platform, Pappa Susso accompanied his shouting songs with the music of the kora, a 21-string harp-lute native to the Mandinkas.

Next, Thokoza, a South African women’s chorus, sang a cappella music based on traditional Zulu songs. Their harmonies were well-blended and alternated between celebration and meditation. The group’s funky young drummer — a boy in his early teens — added to the rhythmic pulsing of the music, and was in and of himself a joy to watch so thoroughly was he connected in spirit to his instrument.

The five female singers of Thokoza, which is the Zulu word for happiness, got the audience to clap and sing along. They talked of their joy at the political changes in South Africa and made jokes about the clicking sounds of the Zulu language. Their music, which they called “night music,” was simple but effective in its jubilance.

La Troupe Makandal, two drummers, a singer and five dancers from Haiti, ended the show with ritual chants, songs, and dances.

Although the performances were interesting and informative about the respective regional or tribal styles, they did not carry the excitement and flair of other African troupes that have performed at the concert hall. Thokoza was, by far, the most engaging of the lineup, but even with that group, the singers were often so self-congratulatory that it was difficult to focus on the actual art of the singing.

Some may say that these singers were at least upbeat and having a good time, but that doesn’t always translate into a good time for the audience. The evening might have been more successful had the organizers trimmed the show back to 90 minutes instead of 150, and allowed these already loud voices and smashing drum beats to take place without amplification. The combination of length and volume detracted from the possibility of really enjoying the evening as a whole.