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London and NYC Club and Concert Listings Heavy Metal: Youngblood Brass Band Interviewer/Photographer: Damian Platt Sometimes Ledging It means living life in the fast lane! At 8:26 on a Sunday night in early May I called my friend Pablo N from the traffic lights at the junction of the Harrow Road with the Great Western Road in Westbourne Park to say that my ETA was not to be held. I had had to turn back home after leaving my notebook behind - couldn't go to the Jazz Café to see the Youngblood Brass Band without pen or paper, could I? At 8:44 I pulled up opposite the Mecca Bingo Hall in Camden to park my scooter. This meant that in eighteen minutes I had driven from the Harrow road back to my flat in Portobello, grabbed my pen and notebook, and biked over to Camden. Surely some sort of London land speed record?! And boy was it worth it, because Youngblood, as not according to my calculations, were already on stage, and I couldn't afford to miss a minute. I had seen the Youngblood Brass Band last year in East London where they played on the same bill as Mike Ladd's Majesticons. They gave a powerful, highly talented performance which I can only describe as a rousing hip-hop brass sound -  music to make your feet stomp, your brain whirr and blood pump happily through your heart. All good, no doubt about that, so when I heard that they were supporting Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra at the Jazz Café, I made damn sure that I was going to catch them again. Trumpets, trombone, saxophone, sousaphone, trombone, euphonium, tuba, big bass drum, cymbals, snare, chorus and rapid fire rap are the ingredients of the unique and exhilarating Youngblood performance, produced by eight friends from Madison, Wisconsin, USA. Horns, percussion and voice – no looping or sampling, either live or in the studio. If George Bush appears to be committed to dragging the image of the USA through the international gutter, Youngblood albeit in a grassroots and much less visible manner, are doing entirely the opposite, and it felt very good to see representation of the very best of US spontaneity, originality and creativity. This is rock the house music, and when the whole band kick in, you get the feeling that the joint really IS jumping! They are also not afraid to produce lyrics espousing fresh ideas, politics and soul, coupled with some of the very best rap wordplay that I have come across for a long while: "We necromance dead crowds - to grab a dance - wack bands don't have a chance - savage plans to launch - official spittle missiles - rattles riddle/battles little - rappers dribble/battles wishful [...] skills abound / still the sound - fills your town - spilling down million pound - avalanches of nouns - rap tantric / I'm sick of spoiled pop star antics - like kids throwing tantrums - through hiphop semantics - anthems are repeated - seriously candid - I don't leave impressions on cats - I leave them branded - most are underhanded - overstate their understanding - stanzas so bland we're demanding - disbanding of your clan" From 'Avalanche' on center:level:roar In these days, when the music business appears saturated with money-fuelled self-seeking egomaniacs, Youngblood endorse a refreshing and altruistic socio-cultural outlook. How many times have you heard a band ask for schoolteachers to come and speak to them after the show? Youngblood are much, much more than just a performance outfit. They are also founder members of the Madison-based Layered Arts Collective, which, as stated on www.layered.org, is a group of “musicians, artists, designers and educators dedicated to promoting and supporting a vibrant independent arts community...by publishing and promoting the work of member artists. In addition, we seek to broaden the musical and artistic horizons of high school-aged youth”. This was the last UK date on a two month European tour, so if you missed them this time round, make sure you catch them next time! And I also picked up a copy of their recent album center:level:roar on ozone music. This is a must-have, trust. David Henzie-Skogen – front-man rapper, songwriter and percussionist – very kindly gave up some time after the performance to tell KTL a bit about Youngblood and their current tour. The interview was conducted in the room next to where Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra were warming up, so not exactly the quietest of places! Can you tell us about what you're doing here tonight at the Jazz Café , I understand you're in the middle of a tour? We're about four weeks into the tour, got another four weeks to go, it's a pretty long tour, our fourth or fifth tour in Europe, we're just trying to build - every time we come back it gets a little better. It's nice to be here at the Jazz Café tonight performing here with Antibalas from New York - a wonderful band Have you done stuff with Antibalas in the USA? Not yet.  We know them because they used to be on Ninja Tune records and we used to do stuff with DJ Vadim and some of the Ninja Tune artists. I've known about them for a while because I'm a big fan of Afrobeat and all that music coming out. We've actually been trying to hook up for a while so it's kind of special. We also did Dublin, two nights in London, and Newcastle. Then they go to Poland and we go to Germany. So this is your fifth tour of Europe. How well known are you in the states compared with over here? I think it's about the same as the UK, we're a little bigger in countries like Switzerland, France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, some of those countries. In the US on any given night: on a week night about 50-200 people, on a weekend maybe 200-400. You all met at school together is that right? Yeah, me and the tuba player started the band together at high school - we were about 14/15 years old. And the idea behind it was to make hip hop using brass? Yeah, basically we come out of the New Orleans brass band tradition but make all original hip hop, Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian influenced music. Do these Cuban and Afro-Brazilian influences come from travel? Not really. I play capoeira, and I've studied with a lot of Brazilians. One of my my first teachers was Senegalese so I've studied a lot of West African music, and then growing up hip hop and jazz were my first big influences. And what are your plans for the future? Tonight we were recording a live album, so when we get back from touring we'll mix that, and then get to work on a new studio album. Then we're gonna come back to the Rockwerchter festival in Belgium just for a couple of days before going back home to work on the album and get our record label together You all live in Wisconsin? Yeah we live in Madison, which is about two hours towards Chicago. And what's the deal with your record label at the moment? [During the concert the band said that they had just finished with their current label - Ed.] Well we were on Ozone, a US independent hiphop label A US sister label to Ninja Tune? No but a lot of the artists are friends and just kind of hang out. Now we have our own record label and entire arts collective. It's a non-profit venture - we publish books, put out records, do educational work, and we got some European distributors for that. So we're just going to do things our own way, in-house. We've always been very independent minded and admired bands that do things their own way, like Gazie and a lot of punk bands who kind of set the bar for how to be an independent musician, maintain your integrity, and make it work Tell us more about the books you publish We've put out some poetry books that I wrote, and then we have other people working on some non-fiction. What do you think of London, do you listen to any of our indigenous music? There are a lot of artists from around here that we did some tracks with - DJ Vadim, the Ninja Tune crew, the Cinematics...London's great, we've been here three times now - last year at 93 Feet East (with the Majesticons) and now twice at the Jazz Café . It's great - I think it's one of the better cities for culture, like New York. It's kind of a centre of musical culture, everyone comes to London. There are so many artists and labels putting stuff out. How does your educational project work? We go to a lot of secondary and high schools, talking about music culture, music history, sometimes teaching kids to play music. All of us are music teachers at home, so when we're on the road we feel this need to still teach Is that your day job, so to speak, when you're back in Wisconsin? Well this is our day job, our full time job - then to make ends meet we teach on the side. You mentioned during the show something about Bush cutting educational projects? Yeah Bush is cutting all types of programmes, but primarily when they decide to take money away from school programmes arts are always the first to go. You know they want more money for the military - the arts are gone. So there's people in a lot of metro areas losing band and orchestra programs. This is one thing in a list of many, many problems we have with the Bush administration. So things are difficult at the moment? Yes everything's difficult at the moment. Touring in America there's less money, there's less kids that have money to go out and see shows. It's a situation that's kind of been getting worse for the last four years and we hope that it's going to change, but all you can do is do everything you can at a local level. Our whole kind of thing is that you're not going to change politics on a grand scale by getting on stage and just talking about politics, it's about what you can do in the community. OK David, it's more than reassuring to know that there are people like Youngblood out there. Good luck with the the rest of the tour, and make it so we know well in advance when you're coming back to the UK! Thanks... Note: The Youngblood Brass Band performance reviewed above (and the consequent interview) took place on Sunday 9 May 2004 at the Jazz Café, London.     RELATED LINKS: Youngblood Brass Band - official website Jazz Café Buy YBB's Center:Level:Roar at Amazon UK (CD / Vinyl)  | US (CD / Vinyl) Buy YBB's Unlearn at Amazon US (CD) Buy YBB's Word On The Street at Amazon US (CD) PUBLISHED: Thursday 3 June 2004 More: Features | Reviews EMAIL UPDATES! Do you want to receive Know The Ledge update emails? Click here to sign up!	::: RELATED LINKS Youngblood Brass Band - official website Jazz Café More Features More Reviews