Music: Freddy’s World
Freddy Clarke plays with Zac Brown Band
Freddy Clarke plays with Zac Brown Band at the Southern Grounds Music Festival! Freddy Clarke was part of the opening act for the eight time Grammy award winning Zac Brown Band along with Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson and others at the Southern Ground Music and Food Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, Sunday, October 20th!
Interview with Freddy Clarke and Don Johanson
Around the World in a Single Day
By HANNAH JEWELL
DAILY CAL STAFF WRITER
The crowd became younger and hipper by the time Freddy Clarke’s band Wobbly World wobbled onto the stage. Clarke defines his style as a fusion of rock, jazz, flamenco and classical paired with various other ethnic elements. As the name implies, Clarke’s band members change with each performance. On Saturday, he was joined by Lebanese violinist Georges Lammam, Grammy-award winning violinist Mads Tolling from Denmark, drummer and singer Brian Collier and Bouchaib Abdelhabi on dombek and Arabic vocals. “The way to be noticed in this sick, rich world is have something unique,” Clarke said. The Wobbly World have just that.
The following is a blog from Usree Bhattacharya:
Last night, I attended a concert by Wobbly World at UC Berkeley’s International House, an experience of multilingual/multicultural musical richness I am not going to forget in a lifetime.
Wobbly World is a “Jazz, afro-cuban, funk, world music” band that “brings together musicians from many continents, integrating the instruments, languages and traditions of each musician’s heritage in unusual sonorities” (see their Facebook page). The band comprises the talented frontman/guitarist/singer Fresno native Freddy Clarke; the skilled two-time Grammy winning Danish violinist Mads Tolling; the multi-talented Ney, Santoor, and some time wine/water bottle (!) playing Iranian Mohammed Nejad; Sukhawat Ali Khan, who brings in the flavor of Indian subcontinental music; Nhut Bui, the skilled Vietnamese Dan Bau player; Cuban Eric Barberia who sings in Cuban Spanish and plays the Conga with equal fervor and passion; East Bay native Brian Collier whose fingers light fire to drums (and sings like a dream!); Bulgarian Vassil Bebelekov, who masterfully plays a self-crafted Bulgarian inverted goatskin bagpipe; and, last but not least, Chicago native Victor Little, the super-powerful bassist.
Last night’s concert was nothing short of riveting. The confluence of melodies, incorporating the Cuban, African, Iranian/Middle Eastern/North African, Vietnamese, Indian/Pakistani, European and American heritages of the instrumentalists and singers, was something that had to be heard to be believed. The cross-cutural/cross-linguistic effort led to an enthralling musical tapestry that was, remarkably, simple and complex. The captivating harmony that the band achieved was not in uniting as one tongue or sound, or even blending the diverse influences seamlessly; it was in forefronting the different linguistic, cultural and historical influences and talents of the band members.
This band is a must-see!
