Diamond Platnumz Concert at The New Parish in Oakland, CA
Otto and I at Lake Merrit
It occurred to me early and often this year that even though I've heard many recordings of bongo flava music, I've yet to actually see an artist perform in person. This is mostly because many artists from Tanzania don't have the money to travel all the way to the United States and perform, and furthermore, there isn't a guarantee that there will be enough of an audience at the concert to make a trip worthwhile. However, in May, I learned that Diamond Platnumz, arguably the most popular Tanzanian bongo flava artist, would be playing at the New Parish in Oakland, CA, one day before I had to fly from UCLA to New York. I had to be there. After organizing housing with a friend of a friend (Thanks Otto!!) and getting a cheap flight that would get me back to Los Angeles at around 6AM the next morning (I'll sleep when I'm dead I guess), the trip was set. I was finally going to see Diamond.
The venue, the New Parish, has an outside cafe and an indoor club/concert area where the performances are held. Outside, there were vendors selling Swahili food (I saw some mchicha, mandaazi, and chapati), as well as a merchandise table featuring things like dashikis and t-shirts saying "Wakanda Forever." It didn't really matter that dashikis are from Nigeria - I got the sense that this concert was more of a general celebration of Africa . However, my only data point for this was the applause and cheering that ensued once the DJ shouted out various African countries and regions (take that comment with a grain of salt). Additionally, many of the audience members spoke Kiswahili, which was very exciting to me as a new speaker of the language who has never really heard it spoken outside of a classroom. I could understand quite a bit from the DJ, but unfortunately, Diamond sung too quickly for me to really catch on to what he was saying.
The opener for the concert was a live band, who played classic 1970s Afrobeat. Their ensemble featured a multitude of instrumentalists, and three vocalists (the saxophone player and the two women to his right). The venue was about half full when these guys went on, and warmed the crowd up for a night of dancing.
After the Afrobeats ensemble, a DJ came on and started warming the crowd up for a second opening act. The video above is of a Bay Area artist "Fresh Breakfast Muk Dipped In Butter, Looking Like Light" (soundcloud link). He's a from the Bay Area, and put on a hell of a set (this song was AWESOME to see live). He has another project coming out soon - Mango Dumb 3. His relationship to Tanzania was unclear - the announcer said he was a young Tanzanian, but he lives and performs in the Bay Area. My guess is that he has some family ties to Tanzania, but I couldn't find anything on the internet confirming this.
At 12:35am, Diamond Platnumz finally came on. Before him, there were multiple opening acts, two DJ sets, a dance off featuring members of the audience, and an incident where members of the VIP section in the balcony above started pouring drinks on the general admission section below. Diamond was flanked by two backup dancers, and launched straight into his hit songs, allowing for the audience members, once they were done screaming, to sing along. I've never seen an adoration like this for an artist at a concert before, and it reminded me of Beatlemania videos. The space was very small for this performance, so the entire concert had a club like feel to it. The videos I took showed just how close I was to the stage.
I've been to a Jason Derulo concert before, and that's the closest thing to this concert that I could think of. The audio was loud, and not excellent; the singing was good, not great; and the dancing was exceptional. None of these aesthetic qualities, however, mattered to the audience. They knew all the words, they knew all the songs, and even if the music was hard to hear over the screams and singing, the audience members could probably fill in the rest in their heads. This was a dance party, so really the only thing that mattered was that the bass was loud and bumping. Otto and I stumbled out of the concert early - I had to be up at 4, and I wanted to salvage at least a couple of hours of sleep. The concert was a lot of fun, and I'm excited to hopefully go to quite a few more in Dar this coming summer.
