**PLEASE NOTE: WE'RE OFFERING THIS CD AT A DISCOUNTED PRICE DUE TO A LONG PAUSE BETWEEN TRACKS 6 & 7, AND A POTENTIAL SKIP ON TRACK 14**
Everyone who knows rhythm is talking about Chris Berry and his band Panjea -- jazz drum giant Max Roach, for example, who calls them "totally exhilarating."
"Watch out for them," warns world beat visionary Youssou N'Dour.
"[They're] carrying the torch for tomorrow," adds legendary entertainer Harry Belafonte.
And Eminem was moved to poetry: "This shit is fucking crazy."
So who is Chris Berry? He is, first of all, one of the living masters of African drumming, with roots in both hand percussion, based on studying the sacred ngoma drum in an isolated Congo village, and the mbira, or thumb piano, whose honey-toned tines stir something deep in the soul.
He is a fluent Shona speaker, married to a Zimbabwean woman who now dances alongside him and his sister at Panjea shows, their movements mirroring the shimmer of the beat.
He's a gwenyambira ("one whose music calls the spirits"), a distinction reserved only for those who have achieved the highest fusion of the technical and the magical in music.
And he's also that tall, beaming, white guy at the center of the stage, wearing nothing more exotic than a jersey and a baseball cap, doing steps with the ladies, coaxing a hypnotic pulse from his instruments, or singing his hymns to brotherhood and love -- with African inflections and an urban American accent -- over Panjea's sizzling groove.
It's hard to believe. In fact, the elders in Zimbabwe who proclaimed him gwenyambira could scarcely believe it themselves. But it's true.
Chris Berry breaks every stereotype. His life is a parade of improbabilities. Nobody could have predicted that this young man, born in a small northern California town, would achieve this much in such unlikely corners of the world.
But he has. And the scary thing is, he's just warming up.
Let the music set the stage. Put on his new album, Dancemakers. The horns pop like fireworks over surging currents of rhythm. Ordinarily these tracks would coax you to your feet and rush you out to wherever they're gigging tonight. For now, though, treat this as a soundtrack to a story that begins about as far from Africa as you can get.
It wasn't a promising start: Like the kids he knew in Sebastopol, Chris grew up on Rush, the Scorpions -- your standard rock & roll diet. By the time he was in junior high he had fallen in with a rough crowd; his friends were, in his words, "a bunch of hoodlums" who sought amusement through shoplifting. On one typical day, when he was around twelve years old, they dropped in on a local music store, where one of the guys pocketed a cassette from the back of the store and hurried out to join Chris and the rest of the gang in their van.
That tape changed Chris's life.
"It was a Fela Kuti album," he remembers. "We started playing it and it was like I had gone home. For hours I listened to it again and again. I couldn't stop playing it -- and I couldn't stop dancing."
Call it astonishing luck that Titos Sompa, one of Africa's greatest drummers, had happened to settle in Sebastopol. Inevitably Chris made his acquaintance and, at age fourteen, became his student. "For a year, before he even let me touch the drum, he trained me on how to dance," he remembers, "because in Africa 'drum' and 'dance' are one word; they're seen as the same thing."
During his last few years of high school Chris and Sompa began talking about going to Africa after graduation, for a full immersion in the culture of the Congo -- a plan that took on extra urgency when, unexpectedly, Chris experienced another epiphany. "I heard some recordings of mbira music," he explains. "It was like nothing I'd ever heard -- very emotional. In the same way that the drum music made me want to dance, the mbira made me cry. And I vowed to myself that wherever this music came from, I would go there someday."
At eighteen Chris left California with his teacher and flew around the world to Brazzaville. Shortly after arrival Sompa sent him on a paddleboat for a trip ten days up the Congo River, to a village where he would receive his final enlightenment on the music he had loved from afar. The people there had been informed of his arrival in the ancient way -- in code, relayed over great distances by log drums.
"This village was so small that the ship wouldn't stop there," Chris says. "The people had to come out on canoes in the middle of the night, pull up against the boat, get my stuff, and then take me back to shore. And suddenly I was in the middle of nowhere."
Chris's arrival was timed to coincide with a service in honor of the village chief, who had died ten years earlier. At the celebration he joined in on drums, and over time wove himself into the fabric of life. He might have stayed forever, if not for dreams he began to have. "I heard this mbira music," he says, "and I saw these old women, who I could tell were from Zimbabwe, waving and saying, 'You must come.' After having that dream a few times I talked with the chief of the village about it, and he said, 'Well, if you get a dream like that, you've got to go.' And so I went to Zimbabwe to learn about the mbira."
Unlike his arrival in the Congo, Chris got off the plane in Harare, the capital city, without a single connection or even a name to track down. "I just started from scratch, asking people on the street, 'Where can I find the mbira?' Eventually I met a college professor who was working with mbira players out in the villages. He became the link that led me to Monderek Muchena."
A legendary mbira master, Muchena taught Chris for ten years, never asking for payment. The young American quickly learned to speak Shona. He married Rujeko Dumbutshena, a local woman. He put a band together, the first incarnation of Panjea; their pioneering blend of indigenous music, dance hall, and hip-hop earned platinum album sales throughout Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and elsewhere. The ancestral court named him a gwenyambira, making him not only the first white man to receive this distinction but also the first non-Shona. Once again Chris felt that he'd found his home and was ready to settle down ...
But once again he was called to leave, not through dreams this time but through spirits. "I played for a lot of ceremonies where people would become possessed," he says. "Some of the old ancestors who came back spoke to me through these people: 'What are you doing here? There are lots of misguided people, lost and confused people, in your country. They're killing each other there. It's time for you to take what you've learned and bring it to your own country because they need it more than we need it here. That's your job. You're the bridge maker.'"
With that the next chapter in Chris's story began. He and Rujeko moved first to New Mexico, drawn by the sacred energy they felt there, then to New York after world music innovator Paul Winter invited him to perform in his annual solstice concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Shortly after that he assembled the current Panjea -- a multicultural ensemble united by his commitment to heal through music.
"My bass player is from Senegal. My drummer is from Surinam. Rujeko and my guitarist are from Zimbabwe. My horn players are from New York. My sister and I are from California. And my percussionist is from ... Cleveland," Chris smiles. "And they're the best band I've ever had."
Positive influences feed the sound of Panjea, from Bob Marley to Sting, but it's the African connection that fuels their mission. "Africa is the source for almost all the popular music of the world," he insists. "You can hear it in blues, rock & roll, funk, hip-hop, and jazz. I've just found a more direct line to the source. I've got the medicine, and it's pure and strong."
"Music is the medicine. World is the patient. We are the doctors." So sings Chris Berry on "Are You Ready for This?" And it's true: Whether you seek wisdom or comfort, or you just want to get up and shake it, Panjea is the bridge that the spirits in Zimbabwe instructed Chris to build -- the bridge that will take you wherever you want to go.
Check out the artist's website:
http://chrisberry.netTrack List:
1. Are You Ready
2. Break Free
3. Falling
4. K.D.W.
5. Why Do We?
6. Honestly
7. Shine
8. Axe Forgets
9. Panjea
10. Proud Line
11. Everyday
12. Lone World
13. Mandela
14. 911
15. A.T.I.O.
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