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Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Producer's Note: Hank & Cupcakes and International Blues Express at BAMcafé Live

by Darrell McNeill

We’re starting to get our sea legs back after the annual summer hiatus—lots of faces turning out for the second weekend of shows, lots of energy in the room, and lots of great music played. Wishes & Thieves rocked with equal parts precision and abandon, bringing intense yet lively noise pop to the faithful, the curious, and the uninitiated. Margot B cemented her reputation as one of the more in-demand contemporary R&B/soul chanteuses in the local scene, with a rousing and nuanced set. And week three of BCL carries the momentum even further.

Cedric Watson and Sidi Toure

Wildly popular indie pop/rock duo Hank & Cupcakes makes its BAMcafé Live debut on Friday, October 4, promising vigorous, danceable lo-fi rock. Then Malian and New Orleans music traditions intersect with International Blues Express, pairing acclaimed musicians Sidi Toure and Cedric Watson on Saturday, October 5.




Hank & Cupcakes is a husband-wife team from Israel currently living in Williamsburg. They are part of the most recent strong wave of high caliber talent coming out of the transitioning scene of north Brooklyn. Diving headlong into the punk/no wave movements that inspired them to move stateside, the couple has been tearing up the NYC club scene with kinetic, electronic and rhythm-driven party punk songs. H&C evokes the heyday of 80s renegade clubs in New York and London.

There’s a 5,316-mile distance between Bamako, Mali in Africa and New Orleans, but the blues traditions of both make them inseparable. This is the impetus of the pairing of award-winning musicians Sidi Toure with Cedric Watson of the International Blues Express. Guitarist Toure (making his second BCL appearance) fuses his liquid and rhythmic guitar play and rich, high, timbered voice with Cedric Watson, Cajun/Creole/Zydeco singer, fiddler and accordionist, to create a musical dialogue—at once modern and ancient. Both call to the same ancestral roots and both will levitate astute listeners miles above the ground.

We enter week three cordially welcoming you to share this musical adventure. See you under the arches.

Darrell McNeill is the Associate Producer of Music Programming at BAM.

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