There’s a potted plant in the back corner of the Black Swan in Tivoli, some kind of floppy-leafed, tropical-jungle affair.
“It’s a banana tree,” says Michael Nickerson, the club’s affable owner. “One of the bartenders found it over the summer and nursed it back to health.” Despite the Bard student-populated venue’s reputation for welcoming warmth, however, on most January nights this bit of south-of-the-equator vegetation would, naturally, be very much at odds with the larger environment. It just doesn’t quite fit the bone-rattling wind, sub-20-degree freeze, and hard, icy snow just outside the front door.
But tonight is not a typical winter eve at the Black Swan. This particular occasion is the release party for Le Demimonde, Angus Martin’s sophomore album on Kingston’s Soluna label, and for the event the thin-trunked botanical specimen is pretty much the most perfect backdrop one could ask for. Actually, after a few minutes of tonight’s brand of music it begins to feel like the lone, four-foot-tall plant could use some company back there—say, a few frond-drooping palms or some cocoanut trees stocked with twittering macaws. Set up just in front of said shrub is Martin, on vocals, piano, guitar, and accordion, and his band—percussionist Reginald Jacques, bassist Josh Levine, and drummer Peter Barr—who are lightly coaxing up a balmy, meandering groove that transforms the snug Irish pub into a sun-drenched beachside cafe. The buoyant sambas, bossa novas, sons, cumbias, and other Latin-derived tunes hold sway over the jammed, tiny dance floor; so much so that, eventually, even your notoriously sober music editor can hold back no longer, stepping in to move as one with the fray (yes, it’s true, and there are many witnesses).
“That’s one big thing that has always struck me about Angus’s music: Everyone who hears it just can’t resist it,” says Soluna producer and engineer Kale Kaposhilin. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a college kid or a grandparent, right away they just love it. Even Zac Shaw [drummer of infamous Kingston sludge-punk duo Dead Unicorn] is a huge fan.” And the fact that Martin sings in several languages—and rarely in English—sure doesn’t seem to be off-putting to the shuffling student bodies in Tivoli tonight, either. Le Demimonde features lyrics in Spanish and Haitian Creole, as well as English and French.
“Actually, French is my first language,” says Martin, 38, who grew up in Marin County, California. “My mom is French and my dad is American, and we just always spoke French at home.” His jazz-loving father and classical pianist mother also introduced him to music, and at a young age he began studying blues and jazz piano, learning the rudiments of pop songwriting from Beatles and Bob Dylan records. After attending an experimental “hippie” high school and spending a few years as a landscaper in New Mexico, Martin enrolled at Bard “to get as far away from the West Coast as possible,” he recounts with a laugh.
At around the time he came east, however, Martin experienced another turning point. On a whim he bought a used copy of the self-titled 1973 LP by Brazilian bossa nova god Joao Gilberto, and from there the sultry sounds of Latin music came flooding in. “That record just opened up a whole new world to me,” he recalls of the legendarily influential album, which features the sparse, hypnotic sound of only Gilberto’s voice and acoustic guitar and Sonny Carr’s minimal percussion. “I’d had no idea such deep beauty existed. It was like how hearing something like Bach or the Clash for the first time must be for others.”
It’s here, however, that Martin’s musical globe-trotting really begins. While at Bard he also “fell in love with Italian,” studying the language and at the behest of his teacher transferring to Bologna to immerse himself further. “I took classes there, spent a few years traveling around Europe, drinking coffee and playing music,” he says. “Then I lived in Prague for a while, before I moved back to the US and spent some time in Wyoming, which was definitely a big a change.” Martin moved next to Seattle, where he studied Spanish, and, eventually, came back East once again, this time to New York. “When you live in a lot of different places and you don’t have a lot of money, you end up living in areas where there are a lot of immigrants,” explains Martin. “In Seattle I lived in an Ethiopian neighborhood, and in New York where I lived was mainly Caribbean. [In immigrant areas] you’re always the outsider, ‘that white American guy.’ But it’s cool because everyone knows you and you get to know everyone else. So I’ve been able to learn a lot about other cultures and other music by living in those places, and I’ve met and played with some amazing musicians and made a lot of friends that way.” In New York, Martin played in popular six-piece outfit Los Acustilocos which released one album and performed at such prestigious Manhattan venues as Carnegie and Merkin Halls and the 92nd Street Y.
With Martin in close proximity again, Kaposhilin approached him about making an album for the fledgling Soluna. “I worked on an album by Los Acustilocos and Angus’s songs just really stood out. I knew we could make a really good record together,” Kaposhilin remembers. “So we ended up working on that first one over the span of about two years at Station Hill Studios in Germantown.” The resulting disc, Presqu’ile is a lush, gorgeously romantic, low-key set that has managed to be steadily discovered by music lovers since its 2005 release despite the label’s on-the-job learning curve. “Other than online and live gigs, [the label] didn’t really have distribution in place for Presqu’ile when it came out,” says Kaposhilin, who is also a co-founder of the web-development firm Evolving Media Network. “But since then, we’ve redesigned the Soluna website and have worked up a new business model for Angus and our other artists. MySpace has shown that the climate is ripe for the rebirth of the artist fan club, so what we’ve been working on is a system that puts fans in touch with the artist in a kind of ‘patron’ capacity. Fans will be able to sign up as ‘members’ through the site and pay a nominal subscription fee, which will allow them access to exclusive content from that artist—downloads of podcasts and rare tracks, giveaways, artwork, custom projects, journal entries. The idea is to help support the artist between tours and releases while also feeding the fan’s interest for news and new music.”
One of Martin’s longtime fans is Paul Higgins, who hosts WKZE’s “Nightshade,” which recently featured a live on-air performance by Martin and his band. “I’d say that if you don’t like Angus’s stuff, then you don’t like music,” Higgins enthuses. “There’s just so much soul in it. It has a kind of nostalgic, Old World feel, but it’s so timeless. It sounds like it could’ve been recorded at any time in history.” The DJ is such a fervent believer that he even hired Martin to play his wedding. “My family is Irish-American and my wife’s family is Haitian, and everybody loved the music,” says Higgins. “Nobody sat for [the] two and a half hours [the band performed].”
Indeed, it’s the very concept of cross-cultural confluence that’s one of Le Demimonde’s overriding themes. “The album has a story to it, about different races and cultural identities meeting,” explains Martin, who recently relocated to Marin County, where he lives with his wife and newborn daughter. “Like, the title of [opening track] ‘Le Franglais’ is similar to the term Spanglish; it’s about someone with French and Anglo identities. But the record is also about people of different cultures playing each other’s music, and not doing it in a self-conscious way. We all know this music came from Africa or Latin America, or wherever. I’m not hiding that fact. I think that people of different backgrounds can play each other’s music in their own ways and still be a part of the tradition and community of that music. They bring something else to it and it ends up connecting people, instead of having them feel left out.”
Certainly no one at the Black Swan tonight feels left out, judging by the teeming, drink-raising mass on the dance floor. And back in the corner, it looks like even the banana tree is swaying in time to music. It’s not bearing any fruit yet, but who knows—maybe when Martin makes a return visit there’ll magically be some banana daiquiris on hand.
“Ah, you know my plan,” says Nickerson.
Le Demimonde is out now on Soluna Records. www.vache-espagnole.com. Angus Martin will perform at the Center for Perming Arts at Rhinebeck on February 8. For more information: (845) 876-3080; www.centerforperformingarts.org.
This article appears in February 2009.
