Fra Fra Sound's performances will take place:

Thursday, September 19 Serengetti East Hall Detriot, MI, 8 & 10PM
Boxoffice: 313 922 27 87 online: www.jazznetwork.org * ticketmaster

Friday, September 20 Joe's Pub at the Public Theater NY, NY
9:30 p.m. Tickets $20 available through Telecharge: 212.239.6200 or
www.telecharge.com or The Public Theater Box Office. Joe's Pub: 425 Lafayette Street (below Astor Place). Information: 212.539-8770 or www.joespub.com

Saturday, September 22 World Music Festival Montréal, 10PM
514 - 396 33 88 or 514 284 3804

Wednesday, September 25 Rialto Center for the Performing Arts, George State
University Atlanta 9 p.m. Concert is free of charge and open to the public and Performing Arts Exchange 2002 conference attendees. For more information, call the Southern Arts Federation's David Batley, 404-874-7244 x
Thursday, September 26 Workshop: "Music from the Dutch Caribbean, Fra Fra
Sound and others." Atlanta 10 - 11:45 a.m. The workshop will be open to participants of the Performing Arts Exchange 2002.

 

The internationally acclaimed Dutch band Fra Fra Sound, an infectious seven-piece group whose music melds African, Caribbean, Latin American, jazz,
blues, soul and gospel into their own unique and compelling sound, tours in the US and Canada from September 19th - 28th with performances in Detriot, NYC, Montréal, Atlanta, Chicago and Bloomington, IN. Since their formation in Amsterdam in 1980, the group has built an increasingly strong reputation through worldwide touring and seven critically acclaimed CDs. The band's journey has taken them through many artistic stages, from the exploration of Surinamese kaseko, kawina and winti, to the extensive relationships between numerous African styles.

Thursday, September 26 Hot House, as part of World Music Festival Chicago 8 p.m. Ticket $12. Hothouse, 31 E. Balbo. For tickets and information, call
312-362-9707, www.hothouse.net. Also performing will be Erwin Helfer and Cristina Branco.

Friday, September 27 Museum of Contemporary Art, as part of World Music Festival Chicago 8 p.m. Tickets $12. MCA, , 220 E. Chicago Avenue. For tickets and information, call 312-397-4010, www.mcachicago.org. Double bill with the Douglas Ewart Clarinet Choir.

Saturday, September 28 Lotus World Music and Arts Festival Bloomington, IN
7 - 8:15 p.m. concert at Tree of Life Tent, Kirkwood Avenue between Walnut and College. $25 festival wristband for all 7 venues and 20 artists. For
tickets and information, call 812-336-6599.

Fra Fra Sound has performed on world music stages and festivals, jazz festivals and clubs, theaters and concert halls throughout the world. They've
performed in Europe, Africa, countries around the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, South America and the United States, earning critical acclaim from
audiences and critics wherever they go.

"Afro - Caribbean rhythms, enticing melodies and solid solos in the hard bop idiom. In the twenty years of their existence, Fra Fra has developed such a
strong individual sound, that the band can allow themselves to single out the separate influences and still remain recognizable." - Frank van Herk in the
Dutch national newspaper, De Volkskrant

"Fra Fra Sound has developed such an individual diction and sound, that you can recognize this band after ten seconds. They are and will remain the
formation of the breathtaking breaks, the subdued power and the polyrhythmic excursions"…"The Fra Fra 'Sound' has become a very important voice." -
Thomas
Wörtche in the German magazine Jazzpodium

When bassist Vincent Henar named his band Fra Fra Sound, the Amsterdam-based musician wanted to play music from his native Suriname (the South American country that was formerly Dutch Guana). The band has since expanded its musical reach. To Fra Fra not only Caribbean and Latin American music styles belong to the African Diaspora, but also jazz, blues, soul and gospel. Fra Fra Sound has managed to develop an absolutely individual sound, in which
Caribbean and African rhythms and grooves are blended with jazz improvisations in a subtle way. African-Caribbean cross-over avant la lettre
- that's Fra Fra's music in a nutshell.

The name 'Fra Fra' has several meanings: it means a hybrid, but also strange, different, mysterious; the invisible connection. Fra Fra is also the name of
a tribe in Northwest Ghana: the Fra Fra people. In that sense the band's name reflects the relationship between music, dance, religion and philosophy from
the African Diaspora and West Africa. In an organic and always swinging way, Fra Fra provides insight into the original relationship between American jazz, Surinamese kaseko and African rhythms.

The continuous artistic development has resulted in Fra Fra being able to highlight separate African and Caribbean influences. Two good examples are
the CDs Kaseko Revisited and Mali Jazz. Kaseko Revisited is a project, in which Fra Fra with the assistance of vocalists goes back to its Surinamese
roots. With the concerts and the CD Kotabra (PRA CD 97001) Fra Fra gives a view on the kaseko of the 21st century. The CD Collaboration Musique
D'Afrique - Mali Jazz (PRA CD 99003) is the exceptional result of the collaboration with West African musicians, such as the kora virtuoso Toumani
Diabate. International critics bracket this CD together with akin releases, such as Ernest Rangling's In search of the lost riddim, David Murray's Fo
Deuk Revue and Steve Coleman's The Sign and the Seal. It's music that offers an exciting confrontation of contemporary African music from the Diaspora
with its original West African roots.

Fra Fra website: www.frafrasound.com
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Press kits/CDs/photos available

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DKnl
207 W102nd Street apt. 5A
NYC NY10025-8704
phone: +1 212 864 59 21

da Costastraat 83 - 2 hoog
1053 ZG Amsterdam
The Netherlands
phone: +31 20 612 46 58

email: deessasha@cs.com