Monday's mp3: Funkadesi

If world music is other people's local music, and other people's local music is a global mashup of ethnic sounds from around the planet, where does that leave us? Globalization is hard at work on the new album from Chicago group Funkadesi, a band that has been winning awards and impelling butts to shake for 11 years, but may just now be finding a wider audience for their funky multicultural sound. Congo player Carlos Antonio Cornier puts it this way:

When people see dreadlocks and turbans, men and women, African-Americans, Jamaicans, Indians, Latinos, all having a great time together and laughing while we're playing, that's what it's about ... we're together, and we're having fun!

The band also had the good fortune to impress a certain local politician who is running for president. "Funkadesi really knows how to get a crowd going," says Barak Obama. "I can't say enough how energizing this band is. There's a lot of funk in that desi."

Funkadesi imparts serious messages alongside the boisterous fun, none more topical this week than "No Leans," an account of people displaced (intentionally?) by the flooding of New Orleans ... in 1927! Ah, the circle of history...

For pure musical fun, you can't beat the Tamil-English Bollywood-reggae fusion of "Dolare" or the opening bhangra-flavored "Crash Da Party." Here's hoping Funkadesi get their show to clubs and festivals far and wide to share their message of multikulti conscious fun.

[mp3] Funkadesi: Dolare
from the album Yo Baba

Funkadesi website
Funkadesi myspace