globalFEST at Lincoln Center's Summer for the City, NYC, Saturday July 30

This past Saturday NYC’s Lincoln Center hosted a special, summer edition of globalFEST, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the annual global music event, and marking its first live, in-person edition since 2020. Held on three outdoor stages — including the Oasis, which slings a giant, ten-foot-wide disco ball above the iconic plaza fountain — the event was part of Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City series, featuring more than 300-plus free events to celebrate the return of live music after the pandemic. 

The Heart of Afghanistan project opened the evening with a meditative set of ghazals and other traditional Afghan styles. The group of four expat Afghan musicians – Ahmad Fanoos (vocals, harmonium), and his two sons Elham (piano) and Mehran (violin), with Hamid Habibzada (tabla) – quietly invoked the series’ mantra of ‘rejoice, reclaim, remember,’ with elegiac songs from their lost homeland. Palestinian singer Amal Murkus brought the energy level up with a fiery set full of songs of resistance and hope. Backed by NYC-based Palestinian qanun player Firas Zreik and his quintet, Markus brought her big, bold voice to bear on both traditional songs and original material. Murkus drew on her dramatic skills as well, taking time between songs to make sure their messages landed. 

globalFEST veterans Rare Essence brought the party to the plaza. The multi-generational tentet were one of the originators of Washington D.C.’s homegrown Go-Go music, and have been going strong for four decades. Tighter than tight and irresistibly danceable, RE’s non-stop percussion and call-and-response chants had even the most jaded New Yorkers up on their feet and shaking their asses to classics like ‘Overnight Scenario’.

DakhaBrakha ©Lisa A Walker

Singer-songwriter Amythyst Kiah delivered an intense acoustic solo set of her deeply personal and slyly political songs. Kiah's sparse, twangy guitar was a tart counterpoint to her rich, commanding voice on ‘Fancy Drones’ and other songs from her acclaimed 2021 album Wary + Strange — making for a very satisfying globalFEST homecoming.

Ukraine’s favorite neo-trad art damage ensemble DakhaBrakha also made a triumphant return to globalFEST, if under far sadder circumstances. The four-piece bashed out their quirky, brash songs under a screen flashing scenes from the war in Ukraine. Images of soldiers on the frontlines, aid appeals, and an animated scroll of birds morphing into warplanes lent an urgency to their set that few could match. While the group’s keening vocal harmonies haunted like a dirge. 

NYC’s own Combo Chimbita closed out the evening with a raucous, infectious set of synth-drenched cumbia-inflected psychedelia. Decked out all in white and accompanied by a pair of masked dancers, the Brooklyn-based quartet of Colombian immigrants leaned hard into the multinational sofrito of sounds from their most recent release, IRE. Illuminated by the powerful voice of frontwoman Carolina Oliveros, songs like ‘Oya’ and ‘Mi Fui’ lifted the dance floor and consecrated the whole evening to whatever orishas were listening.