Antibalas at The Regent- The Unconditional Love

The evening starts off in a smoke filled LA Regent Theatre, where a pair of hands rise and more follow in hot pursuit as a member of the New York based band Antibalas plays a killer trumpet solo. It was on this Thursday night that I discovered that instruments like trumpets and trombones can riff just as amazingly as an electric guitar.   

As Antibalas enters the stage, I begin to wonder who would be the one singing, considering the fact that the instrumental parts of most of their songs go on for a while. The opening song is long and winding, complete with brass solos and tempo changes.  Then, out of the shadows, a hooded, sunglassed man appears.  With him, he brings a fan and nothing else, delicately waving it as he makes his way to the keyboard standing silent (for now) in the upper center of the stage. He plays the keys and tells everyone to put their hands in the air, and it dawns on me that he is why people are here.  This is Amayo.  This is the lead singer and co owner of Antibalas.   

Amayo doesn’t take his sunglasses off throughout the entire evening, but he does remove his hood.  He dances around the stage, almost like a bird in his movements.  He shouts at the audience, telling them to shout back.  There’s a point in the evening when I don’t know what I’m saying but I can’t help myself from saying it. A couple lit a joint next to me and the room was soon filled with the smoke from the various joints being smoked and the smoke emitting from the stage, which surrounds Amayo in such a way that makes him seem godlike.  Amayo knows how to control a room, especially this room.  He introduces a song and the lights on the stage turn on and off in a quick 70’s disco style, as an audience member screams “holy shit!” at the top of his lungs.  

This leads them to their performance of, “Fight Am Finish” a song that Amayo claims is “a song for the dreamers and believers in the room”.  During one of the songs, a man crept his way onto the stage, half voguing, half African style dancing.  He battled the lead singer in a dance/ martial arts battle which must have something to do with Antibalas’ newest album Fu Chronicles, an album centered around both the art of music and the art of Kung Fu.  They battle it out with fans and hats, dances and keyboard playing sessions and at the end of it all, the hatted man leaves, never to be seen again… until the encore that is.  

Antibalas’ music is a mixture of so many different things.  It’s rock, it’s afrobeat, it’s funk and it’s soul.  So many different instruments mesh together to create one sound that is truly unique.  The band hails from Brooklyn, New York. Their sound is harsh and loud, similar to many New Yorkers I know.  But their attitude is anything but that.  They are uniquely calm. They have been around since the early 1990’s and you can tell how seasoned they are in the language of music. 

The night ends with Amayo whispering into the mic, “the unconditional love…” and it sort of fades out as I exit the theatre.  Still, it beats, in the back of my mind.  The unconditional love.  The unconditional love…  

Now, I’m not sure if I have an unconditional love for Antibalas but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that Antibalas doesn’t leave you wanting more- they leave you completely satisfied.