Ashkenaz Anniversary Benefit Show: Baba Ken & the Afro-Groove Connexion; Motordude Zydeco

Show Your Love and Dance: Come celebrate and support your home for world music and dance! To honor the anniversary of Ashkenaz’s opening in March 1973, we’re throwing a birthday party featuring two of our most popular bands of the past decade. It’s a full night of some of the great world and roots music that has made Ashkenaz a gathering place for so many diverse communities of music, dance, and culture.

The evening is a fundraiser for Ashkenaz. Recent times have been hard on most nonprofits and non-mainstream music; the Bay Area has seen the loss of three critical radio stations as well as two of Berkeley’s live music venues, Beckett’s and Blake’s. Ashkenaz is still here thanks in good measure to our role in the world dance community and the variety of programming, from Balkan and Middle Eastern to Caribbean and Latin American, but we continue to be challenged by the difficult economy. Come tonight to dance, enjoy, and give generously – your support is vital in helping keep our doors open.

The Afro-Groove ConneXion is the latest project from Babá Ken Okulolo, the beloved leader of West African Highlife Band, Nigerian Brothers, and Kotoja. AGX began as a tight quintet, but added a searing horn section and more to become a 10-piece West African sound explosion, churning out the massive funk rhythms that propelled Nigeria’s Fela Kuti, the late pioneer of Afrobeat, to international stardom. Along with Okulolo, the former bassist for the legendary King Sunny Ade, AGX is led by Soji Odukogbe, longtime guitarist for the one and only Fela, and Nii Armah Hammond of Ghana’s Hedzoleh Sounds, famed for groundbreaking recordings with South African master Hugh Masekela. These legends of West African music have gathered together a group of Bay Area Afrobeat purists to create a true Afrobeat experience, delivering Okulolo’s message of a better world through music, the universal language. www.facebook.com/agx

Winner of everyone’s vote as one of the Bay’s hottest dance bands, MotorDude Zydeco purveys a high-energy hybrid of Cajun and zydeco styles. Now entering its third decade on the dance circuit, MotorDude Zydeco is powered by the hardest-working man in the local Cajun/zydeco scene, multi-instrumentalist Billy Wilson, who plays accordion for MDZ, along with singer/rubboard player Lloyd Meadows (founding member of Zydeco Flames and Tri Tip Trio), drummer Willy Jordan, guitarist John Graham, and bassist Dennis Calloway. The band takes its name from Motor Dude, a horse owned by the late, great accordion player and zydeco pioneer Boozoo Chavis.

This is posted on behalf of Ashkenaz Music & Dance Community Center.