American Afro-Pop: Toubab Krewe

WHEN DREW HELLER first went to Africa in 2001, he had a bit of an epiphany.

He was studying guitar with Lamine Soumano, when they started to work on a traditional African love song. When it came time for his solo, Heller asked Soumano what he should play.

"I can't tell you what to play," Soumano replied. "Play what you would play, what would come naturally to you."

Heller realized then it was important for him to be himself, not to pretend to be Malian.

"That moment, or what came from that moment has opened my heart to [West African music] in a different way and drawn me more into West African music than any way I would have imagined," he said.

Later, Heller and his friends Justin Perkins (guitar, kora), Teal Brown (drums) and Luke Quaranta (percussion) — all of whom made trips to Africa — formed Toubab Krewe, a band merging West African and rock 'n' roll influences into one sonic stew. (The group's main members met in Asheville, N.C., while in college and added bassist David Pranksy in 2004.)

At the core of the band is Heller on guitar and soku and Perkins on kora. They've been musical brothers since 5th grade, playing been in bands "with names, without a break," since then, Heller said.

"Before [Perkins] had a drum set and [before] I had an electric guitar, I was playing my dad's old classical guitar and he was banging on Tupperware," Heller said. "In middle school we played in instrumental trios and that was more rock 'n' roll. We played our middle school versions of Zeppelin songs and Hendrix and Nirvana. Our first concert was in this barn behind our friend's place. We played our funny joke song, Vanilla Ice's 'Ice Ice Baby.'"

The pair's African interests started to come out a bit in high school, with their first "real" band.

"In high school we got into our first rock 'n' roll band. Count Clobus is the group that lasted from 10th or 11th grade and we played last weekend — we still get together and play," he said. "That's a trio; Justin plays drums, which he's played his whole life. We always called it Afro-Gypsy surf. Very minimalist, more jazz-oriented, listening to a lot of Ahmed Jamal."

But for his first exposure to African music, Heller has his little brother to thank.

"Well, I guess for me personally it was a CD that my little brother got when I guess I was in middle school," he said. "It had percussive instruments and guitar and vocals and some piano things. But it wasn't really until high school that I started drumming and being more and more interested in the traditional West African drumming styles, djembe, West African styles from Guinea."

A guitar player since 4th grade, Heller picked up another instrument during his trips to Africa — soku. Sometimes called the Malian fiddle, soku was a natural choice for Heller because he grew up playing the fiddle, he said.

"It is a one string violin and it's a very small gourd cut in half and either a lizard skin or goat skin is stretched over it — the one I play is lizard," Heller explained. "There's a horse-hair string and a horse-hair bow. It's not fretted. The string is way up about the neck. It depends on where your finger is on the string but the string doesn't actually make contact with the neck. The sound has a very raspy, low-end quality to it, sounds like a voice, and almost has a human voice quality to it. There's a lot of overtones, depending on what you play underneath it."

In 2004, Toubab Krewe released its self-titled debut and has been touring steadily since. In December, the band returned to the studio to start recording a follow-up.

But, being the unique band that it is, Toubab Krewe chose to do things unconventionally.

After rehearsing and recording in a traditional studio, the band decided to move production to a theater in the middle of downtown Asheville in January and February.

"We rented it out so we could all sit on the stage because we've spent the last three years playing every night with each other," Heller said. "We tried going into the studio in all different rooms and it felt awkward, so it didn't feel right to move forward with it. This felt right and felt natural, and an able way to do what we're capable of doing.

While there's still a lot of work to do because the band recorded so much, Heller said the CD should be released "pretty soon." The as-yet-untitled album will showcase the band's artistic growth: Where all but one of the songs on "Toubab Krewe" were reworkings of traditional African songs, the new album will be a mix of original and traditional material, Heller said.

When Toubab Krewe plays the State Theatre on Wednesday, fans should expect to hear some of those new songs.

"In the last couple of shows, we have" played the new songs, Heller said. "Some of them developed in the studio and until now we haven't [been able to play them much] but at this point we're performing everything that we've recorded — I think. There might be a couple of things we recorded that may not make it on the album that we don't play a lot. There's new stuff that we've hardly performed that we are now performing."

In other words, Toubab Krewe will just play what comes naturally.

» State Theatre, 220 N. Washington Falls, Falls Church; with Batala Percussion Band, Wed., 7 p.m. (doors), $12; 703-237-0300. (Falls Church)

Written by Express contributor Rudi Greenberg

Photos courtesy Toubab Krewe