the hum / By Bob Doran

Living the Blues

Also on Thursday, gypsy jazz guitarist Tom Toohey and friends celebrate Django Reinhardt’s 100th birthday at Libation. The “friends” include Ryan Roberts (from Absynthe Q) Jessie Elias, Shao Way Wu and Zach Stone (on sax). “Should be a great evening of wine and traditional arrangements of one the greatest jazz guitar players of all time,” promises Roberts. For a preview, tune in KHUM at noon that day when Toohey joins deejay Mike Dronkers for the Django centennial.

Thursday is also tango night at the Jambalaya with Yo Tango! playing for dancers. No Liquid Lounge since Noonan’s on the road with Moo-Got-2; instead the Pete Ciotti Trio holds down the fort — that’s Pete on drums, Piet Dalmolen guitar and John Murdock bass, “plus many special guests.”

For the dancehall reggae massive the Arcata Theatre Lounge is the place to be Thursday. Anthony B is headliner, and Jahdan Blakkamoore joins him as they big-up the dancehall. As he started his Cali tour last week, I asked Anthony about the impact of artists having shows cancelled because of gay-bashing lyrics on dancehall as a whole. “In a culture, and in a genre of music, and in a society where you find so many entertainers doing dancehall music, you can’t judge all by two or three or four or five people,” he replied. “All of us have some untold story — we have to just shed it and move on. If we don’t, and we start to digging up things from the past, how will we talk about equal right and justice and love when there’s so many things still not repaid between different classes and races of people who have been brutalized, discriminated and murdered. What I’m searching for in the world is not the way to hate, but the way to love; the way to appreciate, not the way to discriminate.”

More reggae? On Friday, Lion Paw presents Army from St. Croix (in the Virgin Islands) at the Red Fox, with local support from Woven Roots and DJ Supa Mario. Saturday it’s a Lion’s Den show at Nocturnum with another young Jamaican inna dancehall, Konshens, backed by the Home Grown Band from Bermuda with Akaboom, High Grade Sound and Beatnok mixing beforehand. (Akaboom returns Sunday.)

If electro and dubstep is more your thing, there’s a show Thursday (Jan. 21) at Nocturnum with R/D and “conscious-wordsmith” Souleye plus Masta Shredda and Mike D. Then Saturday the Helicopter Showdown crew and Western Science bring GeT TuFF to the Arcata Theatre Lounge with DJ Bitcrusher and Devour plus Cardboard Papercut (from the ZombieLust Collective)and Psy-Fi.

There’s still more dubstep and drum ‘n’ bass Wednesday, Jan. 27, again at Nocturnum. Local dubstepper Marc G tells us: “Heavy hitter Alfonz De La Mota is coming to Humboldt, representing the MIA DnB Collective out of the Midwest accompanied by Grasshoppa. Having been in the game for well over a decade, at this point he has drum and bass refined down to a science… a true junglist, now a rare breed.”

Antióquia rolls into Arcata Friday in some sort of biodiesel vehicle to play some post-peak oil tribal punk/funk/jam/rock. (They call it “progress rock.”) The Oakland-based quartet will be joined by local beatmeisters SambAmore and Dun Dun Fare at the Jambalaya. Come prepared to dance with wild abandon.

The beat goes on Saturday at the Red Fox with SambaDá up from Santa Cruz for a rhythmic blast of “AfroBrazilian samba funk dance music.” They’re also playing Friday night at the Mattole Grange in shaky Petrolia.

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