SAVANNAH — The opening weekend of the 17-day Savannah Music Festival ended last Sunday with an energetic and immensely creative tribute to Gullah culture presented by musicians familiar to Charleston audiences.

The double bill featured Etienne Charles and his band performing a newly composed suite called “Gullah Roots” followed by the Lowcountry’s own jazz-folk group, Ranky Tanky.

It was a sold-out, diverse and appreciative crowd at the intimate Charles H. Morris Center, a cornerstone venue for the festival. The music put everyone in a good mood.

The festival, now in its 29th year, has become the Southeast’s premier musical event, and one of the country’s most compelling gathering points for great musicians from around the world. The eclectic mix of styles, low-key vibe and beautiful setting makes it a unique experience.

Charleston has its multidiscipline Spoleto Festival USA, another great international event, but in Savannah music is the sole focus, curated and presented with devotion and respect by Executive and Artistic Director Rob Gibson. Just two hours down the road, the Savannah Music Festival provides plenty of opportunities for Charleston day-trippers, or for those interested in a get-away weekend.

And chef Sean Brock's Husk restaurant, which opened in Savannah a few months ago, might just raise the culinary bar, giving Charleston-area residents even more reason to explore the parks and concert venues of their sister city to the south.

Exploring Gullah roots

The “Gullah Roots” suite has been a project long in the making. Charles, a trumpet player and percussionist from Trinidad, first explored Gullah rhythms and the cultural links between the Lowcountry, Africa and the Caribbean when he was commissioned by Jazz Artists of Charleston to write “Holy City,” a piece he performed with the Charleston Jazz Orchestra in 2012.

That experience fueled Charles’ interest in Gullah traditions. A proponent of cross-cultural musical experimentation, he set out to show the ways Gullah people have been informed by West Africa and how Gullah influences extend through America and to the Caribbean.

The suite started with the piece “Igbo Landing,” which referenced an 1802 revolt by captive Africans and their mass suicide in Dunbar Creek at St. Simons Island. Rather than submit to chattel slavery, 75 people of the Igbo tribe chose to walk across the water back home, drowning themselves.

The movement, like all of the suite, was never didactic; rather, Charles provided a loose structure within which he and his excellent bandmates could improvise freely, giving the piece an impressionistic quality.

Next came a section called “Beladi,” which referenced the Merikins (colloquial for black Americans) who settled in Trinidad after fighting on the side of the British in the War of 1812. Charles also touched on culinary and religious themes in this section, he said.

The suite ended with the contemplative and very beautiful “Watch Night” followed by the exuberant “Freedom Day.” The two pieces, linked, were about New Year’s Eve, when African Americans (still today) enact a ritual of hope in which they look ahead to a better time. The band broke into shouts, both vocal and instrumental, in the upbeat finale.

Charles employed all sorts of styles, from free jazz to rock ’n’ roll, but none of it felt haphazard. Rather, “Gullah Roots” reflected the myriad aspects and influences of sea island culture.

To hear Ranky Tanky perform Gullah songs after the short break was to be reminded of some of the source material that informed Charles’ composition. The songs — some sweet, some sassy, some intensely moving — were expertly rendered by the band: Clay Ross on guitar, Charlton Singleton on trumpet and vocals, Kevin Hamilton on bass, Quentin Baxter and Calvin Baxter on drums and percussion, and Quiana Parler on lead vocals.

When one of the Baxters took up the tambourine, you knew you’d be hard pressed to keep from moving in your seat. And when Parler sang forth with that soulful passion, you’d be challenged to suppress a lump in your throat.

Ranky Tanky has been touring, on and off, for a year and a half now, gathering steam and gathering fans around the world as their debut CD hit No. 1 on the Billboard jazz charts. The band will perform another Lowcountry gig soon: Spoleto Festival USA will put them on stage in the Cistern Yard on June 2.

It was an exciting, innovative pairing — two very different yet complementary bands — and it set the festival on fire.

Praising the Lord

Opening weekend included a big Friday night show featuring Mississippi-raised singer Paul Thorn and his band, joined by the Grammy-winning Blind Boys of Alabama. There were moments when the music shook the roof of the Lucas Theatre.

Vocally, the legendary Blind Boys are showing their age, but they still move the spirit. Each took a turn at a solo or two, and a deeply held faith was apparent.

So, too, with Thorn, who grew up in a white Pentecostal church and developed a profound love for music that stirs the soul. Known for Southern rock, blues and Americana music, his Deep South pedigree and religious background makes him a credible practitioner of gospel, which is celebrated on his latest record, "Don't Let the Devil Ride" (on which the Blind Boys of Alabama are featured). It helps that he has an irresistibly powerful, husky, emotive voice.

He and the Blind Boys opened the set with a shared tune, Thorn singing lead. It got the blood flowing. Then the Blind Boys performed several songs, charming and energizing the audience.

Thorn returned to the stage to offer a few tunes from his repertoire that featured the left-handed guitar player Bill Hinds who could pick, strum and slide in equal measure and with amazing vigor.

When Thorn sang about “crossing the river,” he was referencing heaven, of course. As a white gospel singer, he can really only convey the song’s literal meaning. A black gospel singer, instead, benefits (in a sense) from his history, for he can convey the metaphorical meaning of the lyrics. For him, crossing the river means getting to heaven and achieving freedom from oppression. Indeed, it is the metaphorical significance of gospel music that gives it much of its power.

Nevertheless, Thorn did the music justice. One could not dismiss the genuine feeling and conviction he exuded.

The show closed with the whole lot of them back together and the audience on their feet clapping along.

Double banjo

Soulful musicianship could be found everywhere in Savannah, even at a banjo concert featuring virtuoso picker Bela Fleck and his wife Abigail Washburn, an expert in the claw-hammer style of playing and an expressive singer.

It was Washburn who played the lead role, mostly, offering poignant folk tunes (one of them even sung in Cantonese), accompanied by the expert melding of banjos. Sometimes Washburn put down her instrument to concentrate on singing and Fleck accompanied her.

The combination of his technical prowess and her riveting vocals held the audience at the Lucas Theatre rapt. And when she picked up the fretless banjo and slid up and down its strings for effect, it injected even more soulfulness into the performance.

Their relaxed stage presence, funny banter and storytelling, skillfully chosen repertoire, immaculate musical delivery and overt enthusiasm for the festival made for a special evening.

Gems of Africa

The headliners were great — Paul Thorn and the Blind Boys of Alabama, Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn, the double bill featuring Etienne Charles and Ranky Tanky — but the smaller programs offered by the festival provided unexpected thrills and a healthy dose of joy.

On Friday, the gorgeous music of Africa took center stage. South African guitarist Derek Gripper started the set with solo Bach. His classical chops are well developed, but he managed to give Bach his own expressive spin. Then he respectfully played a couple of stunning traditional tunes before being joined on stage by electric guitarist John Bashengezi from the Congo and multi-instrumentalist Kinobe from Uganda.

Together, they played more folk songs, with Kinobe switching between mbira (thumb piano), endongo (bowl lyre) and kora (21-string harp that sits on one’s lap), Bashengezi tastefully plucking his guitar and Gripper alternated between ornamental accompaniment and bursts of bright fun.

Trio Da Kali then took over, playing traditional music of the Mande culture, centered in southern Mali. Lassana Diabate played a double balafon, or wooden xylophone, with the treble notes by the left hand and bass notes by the right — the reverse of a Western instrument of its kind.

Mamadou Kouyate played the bass ngoni, a guitar-like instrument with a wooden or calabash body covered with cured animal skin. Singer Hawa “Kasse Mady” Diabate provided the mesmerizing, powerful vocals, along with a beat she produced with a shekere (gourd and beads).

Music from Mali relies on repeated patterns (what we might call a groove), limited harmonic range (just two or three chords), and lots of dynamic improvisation. Diabate’s mastery of the balafon provoked regular bursts of applause. And one could not tire of Kasse Mady’s golden, elastic voice, which soared high and swooped low, spinning out the stories of her country in a sequence of stunning phrases.

Trio Da Kali performed again on Saturday afternoon in a longer, equally glorious set. They were joined briefly by Kinobe, a fan of Mali music, who added kora to the instrumental configuration.

Big impressions

The late gig on Saturday featured acclaimed Portuguese fado singer Antonio Zambujo and his excellent band. It was as if everyone was competing to see who could play or sing the softest. Zambujo’s elastic tenor voice conveyed the music's mournful and melancholy nature perfectly.

An afternoon concert featured the Zurich String Orchestra, pianist Sebastian Knauer, the festival’s classical music director Daniel Hope and the Marcus Roberts Trio. The program began with a beautiful rendition of Bach’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, followed by a five-movement piece called “UberBach” by contemporary composer Arash Safaian, which was so Bach-like that one wondered what was the point.

It was the second half of the concert that thrilled. A set of Gershwin tunes, newly arranged by Paul Bateman, was presented suite-like by Roberts on piano, Rodney Jordan on bass, Jason Marsalis on drums, and the Zurich String Orchestra led by Hope on violin.

The songs had a pleasant Hollywood feel, except when the jazz players broke out with solos. Roberts, who is blind, dominated the set with his finger-flying improvisations that visibly wowed Hope and his classical colleagues.

Another “small” program, a screening of the Oscar-winning feature film “Birdman,” provided festival patrons with an early wallop of pleasure. Antonio Sanchez, the Mexican-born drummer featured on the movie soundtrack, played live.

Sanchez is a force to be reckoned with. A versatile musician, he has played with Pat Metheny, Christian McBride, Chick Corea, John Patitucci and many others. Filmmaker Alejandro G. Inarritu invited Sanchez to create a percussion score for “Birdman,” which won a Grammy and other awards (but was snubbed by the Oscars).

On stage in Savannah, he elicited an orchestra-like range of sounds from his kit and helped drive the action of the movie. He said Inarritu played a rough recording of the soundtrack while filming to stimulate and guide the actors on set.

It was one of those atypical moments one experiences at a festival, and it demonstrated how creative and wide-ranging the Savannah enterprise has become.

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Contact Adam Parker at aparker@postandcourier.com or 843-937-5902.

Reporter

Adam Parker has covered many beats and topics for The Post and Courier, including race and history, religion, and the arts. He is the author of "Outside Agitator: The Civil Rights Struggle of Cleveland Sellers Jr.," published by Hub City Press, and "Us: A Journalist's Look at the Culture, Conflict and Creativity of the South," published by Evening Post Books.

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