Spotlight: Mamarazzi

Mamarazzi, an Afrobeat-infused band formed at Wesleyan and currently operating out of NYC, released an EP in November, "The New Ease".

Most of the band members, Andrew Aprile '06, Sam Bathrick '04, Tacuma Bradley '04, Rob Cohen '06, Sam Franklin '04, Eric Herman '05, and Jeremy Noller, studied West African Drumming under Abraham Adzenyah at Wes, and were heavily influenced by African music and their undergrad travels to Ghana, Mali, and Madagascar.

From the band's bio:

Funded by government stimulus checks and the ever-proverbial hamburger flip, the band's first EP release, The New Ease, hit New York streets on election day 2008. Riding the momentum of a blow-out record release concert to a packed house at Black Betty in Williamsburg, Mamarazzi continues to shake up dance floors in New York City, hammering home a simple human theory: tasting your own sweat is fun.

Because it's January and the ground is covered in increasingly grimy snow, this music is making me prematurely nostalgic for the blissed-out weekend afternoons in sunny April when live jazzy funk/funky jazz wafts out of the WestCo courtyard.

Listen to the music here.

Here's a clip of their show at Bard last month:



MySpace
The Next Big Sound: Mamarazzi