Sounds of Cambodia, Mali at UC Theatre
The UC Theatre in downtown Berkeley is celebrating its first year of business in a series of concerts. This weekend’s show pulls in two unique acts that get their sounds from far-flung places.
The headliner is Tinariwen, a rock group of Tuareg musicians who hail from northern Mali. Their music, guitar-heavy and Grammy-winning, draws from Tuareg melodies and rhythms as well as other regional sounds, pop and folk alike. Much of their music evokes their homeland, love letters of a sort to a land that they’ve largely been forced from due to ongoing conflict there.
The second act, Dengue Fever, specializes in a much different sound. The Los Angeles band creates songs that pay homage to Cambodian surf rock from the ’60s and ’70s. They’ve been an unstoppable presence since their formation in 2001. With each album, they further hone and stretch a sound that is paradoxically both completely their own and comfortingly familiar.