The Brooklyn Rail

Oslo World is one of those festivals that inhabits an entire city, presenting events in venues that range from concert halls to small bars, churches to clubs, folk halls to jazz clubs. It has no hierarchy of native countries, and no bias toward either folk purity or deejay bastardization. Many of the haunts (Oslo World includes Halloween in its six-day run) are in a centrally placed location, making this very much a walking festival, with occasional brief spells on the tram lines. Of course, there are violent gig-clashes, so bountiful is the program, with proximity sometimes being an influence, and time-switches or onstage delays often providing a disruptive chaos-force for those punters with neatly inscribed schedule complexities. On one evening, your scribe had to make a tortured choice between two fine-sounding outfits: Norwegian-Syrian folk foursome Spove at the excellent traditional music venue Riksscenen or the Handover, a Belgian-Egyptian trio at the deeply alternative Kafé Hærverk, considered one of the city’s most-loved old joints.

The Handover triumphed, but were unfortunately almost an hour late in playing, meaning missing half the set by the following Japanese ceremonial rockers Kuunatic at the nearby Goldie bar. There seemed to be a situation where several venues just made up their own stage times, oblivious to the fact that they were part of a complex and sprawling festival. A Saturday night folk session at Riksscenen happened two hours later than scheduled, although some individual venue representatives, when questioned, pointed out that their own websites boasted the “correct” times. Your scribe may appear dogmatic regarding his governing timepiece, but during a festival such as this, an entire evening can collapse due to temporal displacement factors.

The Handover—they’ve recently made their debut on the Sublime Frequencies label—brought together the Belgian keyboardist Jonas Cambien (spectral Farfisa organ) with a pair of Egyptians, Ayman Asfour (violin) and Aly Eissa (oud), sitting facing each other, planning on deep connection and concentration. Their set developed out of abstraction, dominated by a traditional folk aura as the oud and violin conversed. Slowly, very slowly, another character was born, as Cambien’s organ patterns grew in regularity, hinting at shaabi dance tunes, imparting a nostalgic exotica, as the music evolved toward something that we could move to, making a compulsive retro-sway possible. The modern sheen and the sepia screen merged into a oneness of inevitability, as if the entire set was a carefully constructed suite.

Goldie is a new venue for the festival (perhaps replacing the missing-in-action Blå club), where your scribe found himself every night, with its ground floor bar stage and its ample-spaced basement club stage. This was very useful when it came to setting up bands, alternating between the two. Some nights there featured rockin’ outfits with nary a trace of folkloric input, just like the 2024 Oslo World edition held several jazz mini-summits, featuring combos without the expected Norwegian folk influences. The aforementioned Kuunatic (keyboards, bass, drums) operate from a rock base, but they include a strong sense of Japanese ritual in their ensemble vocals and their shimmering ’scapes. These three are not the most articulate of instrumentalists, and they don’t seem to be advancing much since your scribe caught them at WOMAD back in 2023. Their ramshackle approach is more suited to garage rock, but some of their songs have more grandiose ambitions, perhaps a touch beyond their playing abilities.

Tramhaus arrived at Goldie from the Netherlands, nervously riffing with metallic serrations, their singer jerking between Iggy Pop and Ian Curtis, all bodily angles, sharp elbows and microphone held like an ice-cream cone, leg kicks, spasm bursts and post-punk (or even pre-punk) atonality. They held a vivid stance but needed some more distinctive songs.

Down in the Goldie basement there was a prog-jazz double bill, but the bands appeared in the “wrong” order, so your scribe had to miss the mighty Red Kite in favor of The Congos, those masterful veteran roots reggae pioneers. He did, however, catch Full Earth, a quintet with a dedication to post-classical pomp-prog, with a pair of tower-building keyboards in action (when one of the guitarists downed his main axe-instrument). Folks might smile at their exaggerated Orange-amp-stacked drama, but Full Earth are too frighteningly heavy for grins to be sustained, as they hold their guitar necks aloft in unison, churning out repeated gargantuan longhair climaxes, way harder and tougher than most such acts from the 1970s heyday of this sound. This is post-prog magnification, a heightened offspring of quaint baroque noodling, now transformed into a towering anthem for the current apocalypse.

It was quite a contrast to hit Cosmopolite on the uptown tram, to witness The Congos, an unknown quantity after all these decades, but revealed in the flesh as one of the best roots reggae combos witnessed in many a year, a band clearly united by regular gigging, knitted together with loaded bass, concise guitar solos and the leading voices out front, projecting wonderfully as they steppa-ed around the stage, dancing, gesturing, and pattering on their out-front congas. Cedric Myton was not present, taking a few days of rest, on doctor’s orders, but Ashanti Roy and Watty Burnett had no problems carrying a fuller weight, their high and deep tones working wonderfully in tandem as they paraded with humor, vigor, and bodily snaking. The key Congos album has always been their first, Heart of the Congos, produced in 1977 with Lee “Scratch” Perry. However, a few new numbers from their soon-coming new LP certainly made the high-quality grade. Unlike many touring reggae oldster groups, these Congos have an inspiring band that concentrates on a deep well of dubbed intensity, relaxed into improvisation, but fixed with a profoundly accessible depth.

As a complete contrast, the small Baba Bar offered an around-midnight set by Sisso & Maiko, a cheerful pair from Dar es Salaam, perched high up in the deejay booth, clearly ecstatic to be fomenting action down on the makeshift dance floor space. Partly in DJ-mode, but adding keyboard spurts, their hyper-singeli post-Taarab sound operates at a near-ludicrous BPM, bass blooping patterns entwined with hyperventilating high-end entanglements. Dancers were not united, each team finding their own style, either selecting rationed rhythms to recognize, or aiming in almost futile fashion to match the speed-beats. The duo kept peaking and peaking, and then peaking some more, prompting smiles from some, serious obliviousness in others. This singeli style is surely as far as we can ever take it on the future-floor of dance!