After spending time studying music in Africa, Chris Berry returned to the US and formed Panjea as a musical avenue to help bring healing to the world. The band has its roots in the ghettos of Zimbabwe, where Berry learned to play mbira and began commingling hip-hop and dancehall beats with traditional African rhythms

“Panjea believes that through the sharing of ideas and open cultural exchanges, the world can once again become a new kind of Pangaea (referring to the ancient conjoined land mass before the continents split apart), united not by its physically joined continents, but by its people,” according to a statement on the band’s website.

Asked to describe the main message in the band’s music, Berry responded “liberation."

“Liberation, in all senses of the word, wherever that word can be applied … politically, socially, personally. It’s about liberation of movement, and being able to dance.”

The band added a new element after a fall of 2005 tour when Panjea was given the opportunity to open for renowned jam band String Cheese Incident. That led String Cheese mandolin player and vocalist Kang to join forces with Berry, a partnership that continues today and will be on stage at Sopris Park this Sunday.

Berry couldn’t remember who exactly initiated the idea of the two collaborating.

“I think we kind of approached each other about it,” he said. “We had mutual friends and we respect each other’s music and started talking, and it just sort of worked out.”

In a small room located backstage at the Portage Theater in Chicago, I ask Jason Hann what exactly influenced him and Michael Travis to pursue the heavy, beat-based electronic dance music of EOTO. Hann is all smiles as he tells me about the impromptu jam sessions that occurred whenever he stayed at Travis' Colorado home.

"Whenever I was at his place, we just wanted to set up and play music after String Cheese practice," says Hann, who served as auxiliary percussionist for The String Cheese Incident from 2006 until the band's dissolution in 2007. Travis, SCI's drummer, would play bass and guitar during the sessions, while Hann handled the drum work.

What started out as loose jamming quickly evolved into something more. They began looping some of the instrumental work, which allowed them to add extra layers to the texture of their sound. "As we started getting into some other loops and different types of programs, then it became a thing where we were like, 'Wow, what we're doing lends itself really well to dance music, which we both like.' So, we kept aiming for that direction," Hann says. "And then eventually, one of the times we listened back to things that we were recording and we were like, 'Wow, that sounds really good, let's do it front of an audience.'"

And so it began. EOTO was formed and the duo hit the road, touring relentlessly across the country. They have spent the entire summer playing shows and festivals nationwide, and their stop this night has brought the boys to Chi-Town. This show, however, will be a little different - Hann and Travis will be joined by Michael Kang (electric mandolin, fiddle) and Kyle Hollingsworth (keyboards), both of whom are also former members of String Cheese.

The music of Youssoupha Sidibe is deeply infused with a longing for the full realization of divine love in this world. Youssoupha’s musical career began over twenty years ago in his home of Senegal, West Africa, where he was trained as a Kora player at the National Music Conservatory of Senegal. His music fuses traditional West African sounds on the Kora, with the Sufi devotional chanting of the Senegalese Baay Faal community. The angelic sounds of the Kora, an indigenous harp, soulfully carry Youssouopha's devotional lyrics sung in Wolof, Arabic, French and English. (more..)

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