Cully Day 3 - Festival and Friends

Heard Angolan singer and guitarist, Aline Frazão, and her band Movimento (Movement) on mainstage #2.  Great show.  I'd describe her music as pop/jazz and Brazilian influenced. She sang in Portugese, but I didn't recognize it as Portugese right away. The accent is different from the Brazilian Portugese that I have heard on many albums and concerts. Not that I understand Portugese at all with any accent. Yes, Angola was a Portugese colony.  And Aline now lives in Portugal (Lisbon). Her bandmates are also from Lisbon, except the bass player who is Italian.

She spoke to the audience in French, but occasionally switched to English if she didn't know the word for something.  On a few occasions someone in the crowd helped her with a French word for something. They played for over 90 minutes and the crowd still wanted more.  

I met up with my friend Martine after the show. I hurried out after the first encore to text her, but she grabbed me at the door. Meeting up without cell phones. How retro. It's the 80's all over again, except the hair styles are better now.

Had a lovely dinner with Martine. There was a sit-down restaurant at the festival. It looked like a big two-story tent. After dinner we caught the end of Medeski/Martin & Wood on mainstage #1.  

Yes, they are a trio. That's special guest Nels Cline on the left with them. Pretty cool, but a little crazy at times. They blended one song into the next. Or maybe it was one long piece. I'm not really sure.

After that it was nearly 1am. We checked out the boat venue and heard the last three tunes of Swing Maniak's 5 hour gig. Great gypsy jazz trio. They played "Them There Eyes", "Theme from James Bond" and "Oche Chornia" (Russian folk song). Google tells me I spelled that correctly.  My Russian professor from college would be proud. I didn't think I liked gypsy jazz, but these guys were great. I'm a fan now.

It may look like these guys are asleep in my photo, but they were burning up those strings. They ended their 5 hour gig and then did an encore. Incredible!