International Musicians Bring Musical Medicine to Grand Annex in October

In October the Grand Annex presents two back-to-back exciting shows through Kala Koa Entertainment. On Oct. 9, five-time Grammy winner Bakithi Kumalo performs and on Oct. 10, Giuseppe “Peppino” D’Agostino, known for his open tunings and finger styling, will come to Grand Annex’s stage.

Master musician Bakithi [pronounced Bagiti] Kumalo, famous for his bass lick in Paul Simon’s You Can Call Me Al, will perform standards and songs from his upcoming album What You Hear Is What You See. More on the album later.

Kumalo, who is known as a storyteller, is named as one of the top 50 greatest bass players of all time, having played with luminaries like Paul Simon, Herbie Hancock, Gloria Estefan and Josh Groban. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa Kumalo worked as a session musician in South Africa during the 1970s and early 1980s, eventually becoming a top session bassist and accompanying international performers during their South African tours.

In 1985, during the sessions for Graceland. Kumalo was introduced to Paul Simon by producer Hendrick Lebone. Despite his nervousness in meeting the American pop star in a studio setting, Kumalo said Simon immediately gravitated to his bass style. Since then, Kumalo has toured regularly with Simon.

Growing up amid traditional African music and listening to popular American music on the radio, the bassist fuses these elements with rhythmic and harmonic complexity. Kumalo told RLN by phone that Los Angeles is his third home, after South Africa and New York. He has played in LA so many times and with so many people. He even opened the Kodak Theater in the mid 1990s with Paul Simon.

“It’s like coming back home for me… it’s big,” Kumalo said. “ The fact that I’m coming with my own project and working with musicians from LA like Ron DeJesus I’m just very excited.”

To bring his own band and his own music, Kumalo said, is all about the stories and what got him here.

“It’s me telling my story,” he said. “The playing side is the cream on top. It’s about me saying thank you to America and the rest of the world, that they have accepted my bass playing and now I’m seeing young bass players say to me, ‘Hey, my dad used to rock me when I was a baby playing the Graceland album.’”

Kumalo said it’s about keeping Simon’s legacy going and to keep educating young people about his music. Simon travelled to South Africa and got Kumalo out of the place where he was, as he tells the story. Kumalo then had know idea who Simon was… but Simon gave him the opportunity and he took it.

“Now is my chance to give back to him, to say thank you Paul … ,” Kumalo said. “Because I don’t think, sometimes with musicians, that we … thank people we played for. My thing is to have fun and I’m going to get people to sing along.

“Of course because of this pandemic, every moment that you’re on stage you feel like, ‘wow God saved me to be up here standing and talking to these people coming to watch us play.’ It’s exchanging gifts, so I’m excited about it.”

Kumalo said the pandemic has been devastating. He lost some of his family members. Clubs, restaurants and schools closed down. It’s a chaotic situation. But at the same time, he said we have to make sure that every day is a gift to be out there and not think about all these negative things.

“Let’s have fun, let’s play music, let’s talk, let’s sing,” Kumalo said.

Kumalo and his band are going to mix it up. He’s going to showcase American music he’s played to highlight the other side of the music, not just his music that people are familiar with. Most importantly it’s going to be about Kumalo’s new music played for the first time from What You Hear Is What You See.

That title, he said, means we live every day and our eyes can see things. During the pandemic he had to spend a lot of time “knowing” both his instrument and himself, because he usually moves from “hotel to hotel, plane to plane.”

“I’m home and I’m exposed to everything,” he said. “That’s when I started to put all these pieces together that I had been writing.

“What You Hear Is What You See, because … we hear about Mexico and the borders and all the Hatian people trying to run away from their dictator — and then getting whipped. It’s so painful to hear those stories. But this record represents everything. It represents love, sadness, pain. Music is our medicine to keep it going. So, what you hear is what you see.”

Kumalo exemplifies this idea. Coming from South Africa, he said at 10-years-old he [felt] like ‘what the hell is going on?’ It was chaotic. As he grew up every day things got worse with a lack of food and clothing. The system was brutal he said and he had to find a shelter. He found a shelter in his bass and decided to stick with it. He said it wasn’t easy. His parents didn’t have money and they couldn’t buy him an instrument. But he went to every part of the township and listened to bands play.

“Sometimes they gave me the chance to play — and maybe get some other bass player kicked out of the gig, you know, because I was young and [talented] For me, it was like, find what works for you. I tell my kids when you go to school don’t expect the teacher to give you [anything]. You have to earn it, you have to find it, you have to be the best at it and come out productive and produce. It starts with you.”

Kumalo recalled as a child, when he was starting to get into music and American music, he dreamt about being in America. He remembered seeing a picture of Diana Ross on an album and thinking ‘she is so beautiful I have to meet this lady someday.’ Years later, after he came to America, Kumalo got a call from Ms. Ross, who was recording a Disney song and wanted a South African person to put the vocals on it. When she asked for him, he said just a second, put the phone down and he had quite a momentous thrill. Kumalo said many people knew him from session work so they told her about him and she called him.

“That’s why I wanted to come here because this is an amazing place,” he said. “I’ve been all over the world and there is no place like America. You have to earn it too. It’s not like it’s just unbelievable, you have to work for it.

“Paul gave me the wings to fly, I am flying.”

Kumalo has two more upcoming shows. He’ll be at Vibratos to play two sets at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on Oct. 7, which goes hand in hand with his Grand Annex show. He will also perform at The Musician’s Institute in Hollywood on Oct. 8.

Bakithi Kumalo
With Ron DeJesus, guitar, Dan Boissy, saxophone, Tony Moore, drums, Munyungo Jackson, percussion, Hans Zermuehlen, keys.
Time: 8 p.m. Oct. 9
Cost: Tickets: $23; Cabaret Tables $112-$132
Details: www.grandvision.secure.force.com/bakithi-kumalo and www.kalakoa.com
Venue: Grand Annex, 434 W. 6th Street, San Pedro