Photo credit: Michael Pellegrin
Westchester Arts Council Gets "Experienced"
By: Michael Pellegrin
Published: April 25, 2008
Certain predictions may be safely made before attending a tribute concert featuring the music of Jimi Hendrix. The crowd will be diverse in age and race. One of the musicians will talk about how fresh the music remains after all of these years. Someone will mention an actual Hendrix concert they or someone they know went to. “Purple Haze” will be last on the set list.
These indeed came to pass, but there were enough surprises—and expert musicianship from Wali Ali & The Tambourine Band—to make for an enjoyable and thought-provoking evening. For example, “Purple Haze” was listed last on the program, but the band had to switch things up when Wali Ali, the guitarist and lead singer, broke a string on his Fender Stratocaster, a model of guitar favored by Hendrix. Ali, who said he very rarely breaks a string while performing, switched to another guitar, which was lacking the tremolo bar and other effects Ali wanted to employ, but then, in a demonstration of the small-city vibe with big-city sounds that the Westchester Arts Council has brought to White Plains, an audience member volunteered to go down the street to Sam Ash Music and get a new string. So a few songs later, the Stratocaster was back in business and the festivities ended with an encore performance of “Voodoo Chile.”
Highlights in between the finale and the opener, “Fire,” included “Little Wing,” “Axis: Bold as Love” and “1983 a Merman I Should Turn to Be.” “Machine Gun” and “The Star-Spangled Banner” were other highlights that forced the listener to ponder current events including the war in Iraq; the observer might have been tempted at first to dismiss the lyrics of “Machine Gun” as banal so many years after the Vietnam War (“Evil man make me kill ya/Evil man make you kill me/Evil man make me kill you/Even though we’re only families apart”), but after further reflection the same observer might realize that perhaps it’s war itself—and the never-ending need to point out its futility—that’s banal.
The other musicians were Steven Brown on drums and David Merrill on bass. The concert was dedicated to the fathers of the three musicians: Joseph M. Brown, Robert Merrill, the famed opera singer, and Pearlee E. Saunders, one of the Tuskegee airmen, all of whom died in the past several years. The concert, officially titled “Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been Experienced: The Music of Jimi Hendrix,” was the latest in the WAC’s live @ the arts exchange series. Held on Saturday in the Grand Banking Room of the Arts Building on Mamaroneck Avenue, the event was sponsored by Jacqueline and Arthur Walker.
Photo credit: Michael Pellegrin
Merrill told the crowd that the group had only a few months to prepare for the gig and hadn’t ever really played Hendrix’s music professionally. Ali, an attorney by education and assistant manager at Manna Foods in White Plains (he’s known in his offstage life as Wali Muhammad), said he did extensive research on Hendrix to prepare for the gig, and he pointed out that he has lived twice as long as Hendrix, who died at age 27, and has experienced things—not least the love of his own family—that Hendrix never experienced.Ali shared a healthy irreverence with the crowd toward a man he clearly reveres. In detailing how he prepared for the gig, Ali voiced concern that he wasn’t an orthodox singer (a sentiment belied by able singing throughout). Then, he said, he remembered one important fact: neither was Hendrix.
