‘Afrobeat masters’: Armo comes to Brattleboro | Entertainment

BRATTLEBORO — A New York City band with heavy hitters from the Afrobeat scene is performing at the next Bandwagon Summer Series show. 

“We’re taking a left where Afrobeat and soul and Afro Caribbean soul music meets jazz and experimental music,” said Jordan McLean, trumpeter and percussionist in Armo, which will visit Vermont this week, and also a member of Antibalas, an Afrobeat band started in New York City in the 1990s. “We’re getting a little more art ensemble versus straight Afrobeat dogma, which is what, Antibalas, we’ve really prided ourselves on for 25 years.”

Armo will play its spontaneous arrangements at Retreat Farm starting at 6 p.m. Friday as part of Next Stage Arts’ summer music series. Tickets cost $20 in advance and $25 at the gate. 

The band formed after a Friday Night Jam event run by Mike Greenhaus, editor of Relix magazine. McLean described the jam as “a spiritual conversation and musical event,” where the lead singer of Antibalas wanted to put together a group to perform one of the nights. 

“It was just members of the Antibalas, New York afrobeat community,” McLean said. “We didn’t rehearse. We just went in and played some of his tunes and played some Fela tunes.” 

McLean was referring to the tunes of the mononymous Amayo, the longtime keyboardist/vocalist of Antibalas, and Fela Kuti, a Nigerian musician who pioneered Afrobeat and died in 1997. Kuti has influenced many artists.

After playing at the Friday Night Jam, the musicians went out to dinner. McLean said he suggested making the group a band.

Essentially, the 10- to 12-member Antibalas turns into a five- to six-piece band for Armo. 

“We just saw the possibility for something a little more nimble and a little less rehearsed,” McLean said, seeing that as the ethos since the band’s 2015 start. 

They had “a great run” before the COVID-19 pandemic, McLean said. They mostly performed monthly gigs at a bar in Bed-Stuy called LunÀtico, working out the band’s sound. 

“We’re not doing arrangements,” McLean said. “We’re treating it more like a jam band in a way, except where we all know the material.” 

Armo usually performs with six members. About 10 musicians are on rotation, depending on scheduling. 

They use a setlist for shows, McLean said, “but that’s it.”

“Everyone just knows the parts,” he said. “Part of the fun with this group is to see what happens.” 

Armo is back to playing at LunÀtico every month. It is also performing at a monthly jam session at The Bitter End on Bleecker Street the first Thursday of every month. 

Dave “Smoota” Smith, trombonist and keyboardist, “hooked us up with Next Stage,” McLean said. Smith has taken over for Amayo since he moved away. 

Armo is playing two festivals this year and served as the house band for an awards ceremony for CaringKind, formerly known as the New York Alzheimer’s Association, where musician Peter Gabriel’s organization Reverberation was awarded for its work on music and the brain, as well as at an after-party for a tribute to Paul McCartney. 

McLean is looking forward to Friday. 

“We love doing outdoor shows,” he said. 

The Bandwagon Summer Series is billed as “a family-friendly outdoor cultural performance series running from early May through mid-October,” with more than 20 performances scheduled at ballfields, farms and parks in Windham County. Children younger than 12 get in for free. 

“Afrobeat from the masters! Armo has stepped into the spotlight in New York City,” Keith Marks, executive director of Next Stage Arts, said in an email. “The opportunity to bring them to Brattleboro has us over the moon. The community is going to relish in the experience of dancing to a collective of virtuosic musicians.”

Armo’s first release, a self-titled EP, came out on McLean’s System Dialing Records in 2018 and is available on a 10-inch 45 rpm record, as downloads and streaming on all major platforms. The 2020 single “New Beginning” is available on Bandcamp.

McLean anticipates the band will likely be working on an album from a live session from The Bitter End then they’ll record some new songs in a studio. He compared studio sessions to painting and sculpting, whereas live performances are more like a sporting event. 

“It’s a different approach and a different goal,” he said. 

Members have performed around the world with David Byrne, Angelique Kidjo, TV on The Radio, Sharon Jones & The Dapkings and Ornette Coleman, and in the Tony Award winning musical “FELA!”