The Boston Afro-Beat Society
This iconoclastic Boston collective is inspired by the work of the Nigerian dissident musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Like Fela, they have taken the traditional Nigerian music genre known as highlife and infused it with jazz, funk and indigenous roots trance music. Mixing together the panache of James Brown, the sonorous bass lines, sinuous rhythms and propulsive energy of post-colonial Nigerian musical expression, the Boston Afro-Beat society explores danceable grooves while raising communal consciousness. Yet danceability is but one feature of their popularity, as their set list continues to be informed by social protest and a call for sustainable environmental practices. Simmering brass echoes, for example, might well evoke the recent surge of protests by indigenous villagers in the Niger Delta region over the despoliation of tribal homelands caused by rampant oil exploration, in a country now also being torn apart by occasionally widespread sectarian violence.

Marcia Higgs & The Dis-N-Dat Band:
Marcia Higgs is from Jamaica, where she grew up in the family of famed voice teacher Joe Higgs, mentor to dozens of Jamaican musical luminaries, including Bob Marley, the Wailers, The Wailing Souls, etc. In an often discordant sea of dancehall rivalry, rampant carnality, misogyny and materialism, Marcia stands out for her tasteful blend of soulful spirituality and socially conscious lyrics. Her career dates back to 1976. A teacher like her father, Joe Higgs, she provided little known backup vocals for the Ivory Coast reggae phenomenon Alpha Blondy on his landmark Jerusalem release (1986), recorded in Kingston, Jamaica,. She is currently the main organizer for the upcoming Joe Higgs Reggae Music Awards scheduled to take place on 8 December 2006 in Miami. Marcia brings to Lowell an unquenchable thirst for social justice and calls for the cultivation of a higher consciousness, encapsulated in her refrain “Where there is no vision the people perish. Perceive it, conceive it, believe it, achieve it.” Her successes on the Jamaican charts include such hits as “Down in the Ghetto,” “Jump Up Time,” “Africa Must Be Free,” “Poverty Haffi Done,” and “We a Say One.”

Balla Tounkara & Group Spirit
In West Africa, tribal historians are known as griots or jallis. They also function as storytellers, peacemakers and bearers of royal geneaologies. Balla Tounkara comes out of this oral tradition, an adept performer with the 21-string harp-like instrument known as the kora. The delicate arpeggios and plinking glissandos of the kora could arguably be traced back to the origins of civilization in East Africa and the Middle East; later, it would inspire the Celtic harp. Balla takes this ancient instrument and composes music based on traditional Mande music from Mali, adding some blues, funk, reggae and jazz, an eclectic blend which might suggests artists such as Isaac Hayes, John Coltrane and Paul Horn. Balla’s atmospheric meditations opened the groundbreaking academic seminar recently held at The Divinity School, Harvard University, Kingdom Rise, Kingdom Fall: Contemporary Currents in Caribbean Spirituality” (2003)

The Boston Horns
Think Galactic, Maceo Parker, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, or the soundtrack to Jack Kerouac adrift on the Internet highway, stranded somewhere between today’s Beirut and pre-Katrina New Orleans. These veterans of the Boston Globe Jazz Festival and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival are currently being played on XM Radio; this autumn they will be on tour in Japan. Their instrumentals hark back to the legendary Dizzie Gillespie, Art Blakely and Charlie Parker, producing “a jazz version of jam bands.” This is where Superfly, Shaft, the Meters, Funkadelic and Parliament collide, their sonic landscapes simultaneously recall the ability of music to bridge differences, instill a sense of world citizenship, and George Bernard Shaw’s observation that “all great truths begin as blasphemies.”

Ameranouche
Ameranouche brings hot gypsy jazz in the spirit of Django Reinhardt to the New England Culture Fest 2006. This four-piece band combines talents from New Hampshire, New Jersey, northern Illinois and Colorado. Their particular niche is fashioning original interpretations of some of the great American composers, artists such as Cole Porter, Hoagie Carmichael and George Gershwin. Ameranouche promises a trip down memory lane, before the era of cell-phones, blogs, beepers and text messages, in a style one might term acoustic alchemy.

United Roots Dance Troupe
Fred Astaire, Chubby Checker, Elephant Man – every generation has its favorite dance trendsetters. A sort of dance time machine, this collective (comprised of 18 residents [age 8-40] drawn from the metro-Boston area) takes observers through the popular dance styles of the past century. Hipsters combining smooth moves and streetwise savvy with uplifting messages, products of a digital age, they convey the promise and perils of contemporary urban life behind the facades of baggy jeans, lip gloss, and 50 Cent.

The Fashionably Fair Runway Show
Despite popular misconceptions, popular fashions can make people aware or, in other words, fashionably fair. One of the highlights of this year’s New England Culture Fest will be a runway show featuring cutting-edge couture design work. Participating designers will present both male and female formal and informal wear, inspired by fashion trends from such widely divergent and exotic locales as India, Viet Nam, Korea, the Philippines and Japan. In some instances, masks will be employed to highlight the designs and thus not detract from the originality on display. Here’s your chance to get beyond the conventions of Vanity Fair and be both fashionably hip and socially conscious as well.

The Boston Kung Fu Tai Chi Institute
The Boston Kung Fu Tai Chi Institute, is dedicated to high quality martial arts and is renowned for producing top martial artists who have furthered their careers in movies, television, and national and/or international competitions. Kung Fu, translated as ‘skill attained through hard work,’ has been prevalent in Chinese culture for thousands of years. A wide variety of styles exist from areas all over China. The Boston center focuses on northern styles, such as Tai Chi, Long Fist, Eagle Claw and Praying Mantis. The Lion Dance, which dates back some one thousand years, is often performed to bring good luck and ward off evil spirits. Keep your eyes open for periodic impromptu Lion Dance performances, our stage act, and stop by our booth for more information, or a trial Tai Chi class.

Beverly Rush
One of the festival’s featured artists, Beverly Rush is a singer-songwriter producing music for an ailing planet Earth. Working in the idioms of folk, blues and jazz, she is a marvelous raconteur, whose warmth and informality recall Tom Paxton and the storytelling skills of U. Utah Phillips or Ani DeFranco. She is currently enrolled in a Music for Healing and Transition program. New Age sentiments inform much of her work, infusing her sets with all the warmth of freshly-brewed herbal tea: “Bless God, America,” “Go to Africa,” “Grandma’s Quilt.”

Zebbler
Straight from a major US tour, VJ Zebbler is now back home in the greater Boston area, representing the live video collective Glitch. Writer, a voice artist, a music maker, a painter, a sculptor, and an established video artist who studies human neurology and consciousness as a hobby, Zebbler is a natural born performer using any means possible to bring ideas to life, from singing for cow herds to live video performances. Born in Belarus, Europe, in a poverty stricken rural area, Zebbler is no stranger to the need for fair trade and fair salaries for all of the people in the world. It is his hope that

"...one day the financial inequality on our Earth will stop and fair pay would be given to anyone in the world for their services, regardless of their location, ethnicity, sex or nationality."