Live Review - The Sistahood Celebration Launch Party
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Biltmore Cabaret

The eighth annual Sistahood Celebration launched its month-long showcase in true East Van style with an austere display of feminine talent. The celebration’s theme of re-birth and co-creation lingered pervasively in the shadows as the dank, dark Biltmore Cabaret became alight with enthusiastic dancing and energetic performances. A line-up of local hip-hop talent led to a stellar though somewhat anticlimactic performance by Philadelphia-based MC Bahamadia.

DJ Buzy B and The Heard featuring Shay Faded helped work the crowd into the rather frenzied state with which they received local favourites Kytami, Kia Kadiri and Ndidi Cascade with Timothy Wisdom on the ones and twos. The various permutations of the performers wove a synergy through the audience; the stage was a bricolage of movement beat and rhyme.

The level of professionalism and skill each performer displayed was apparent in every soulful strain of Kytami’s violin, the crowd-pleasing lilt of Kia’s rhymes and the lucidity of Ndidi Cascade. It was eclectic enough to be interesting but lacked the pretensions one comes to expect from such events.

This kind of feminism was subtle; hip-hop may be a man’s world, but each performer put a delicate and distinctly female spin on the art form. The Dee Cru II breakers took an innovative perspective on a usually erratic and masculine art with smoother, rounder and more sensual styles.

Bahamadia had the misfortune of following this lively display, so although her beats were bumping and her flow was fresh the energy wasn’t quite maintained. Bahamadia has a very natural, raw style and the simplicity of DJ and MC was refreshing. Mixed in were jazzy beats of Philly faves The Roots, which took on new meaning as Bahamadia layered her own velvet voice on the familiar sounds.

However, the night had truly climaxed when Kytami delivered her version of Pachebel’s Canon against the powerful backdrop of scratching and rhyme. It seemed to draw from that collective musical memory bank, awakening something primal and soulful in the audience. This is what Leo Tolstoy meant when he defined good art by its ability to evoke common emotions and unite men in universal brotherhood. Or, as the case may be, Sistahood.

SistahoodCelebration.com

By Amalia Nickel

Best of Vancouver 2006
by Kristen Cudmore | December 2006
1) Kytami- Ask Kytami what she plays and she'll say 'electric violin' because even though she's classically trained, everything she does has a beautiful effect to send the sounds sailing into an abyss of cultural beats. Think Thievery Corporation except she's not stealing anything, she can make her violin sound like a bass, like percussion, and also she can fiddle through any track. It's passionate, indefinable and sends you blood flowing through your veins in a completely different energy. Such rich combinations, it's so to date but almost timeless, Kytami is in high demand in Vancouver and it's obvious why.

www.lefthip.com

When Kytami's parents put a violin into their child's hands at the age of three, they must have had visions.

Perhaps they saw her attending recitals or simply growing rich in character through the experience. If those visions had been a little bit more true to life, they would have gone something like this:

The first weekend of reading break has arrived. The campus is graveyard quiet except for the crowd of hip-hop stalwarts barely filling half of the Independent Centre. Their numbers are measly, but numbers are in no way an accurate measure of determination. Especially when there is an inflatable raft full of beer involved.

Kamloops MCs Nate-One and Shoe open the festivities. Soon the laid-back beats are pounding. Tastes of dry ice and second-hand dope wrestle for control of the hazy air. The concrete room begins to assume the atmosphere of a giant low rider with 160 passengers.

A man calling himself Smoke Dog slouches to the microphone, beer in hand.

Imagine a floppy black hat with oversized sunglasses and teeth. Somehow the hat grew a body. The hat asks for a "Hell yeah." The audience gives it. The crowd is deemed sufficiently juiced.

A thin slip of a girl stalks the stage, barely the height of a speaker in her black lacy top, plaid skirt and high-heeled boots. But it doesn't matter.

The girl's got presence, and a black violin. She begins to play, and it's got all the things that violin music has, sweetness and savour and bite, but wait, there's something more. Kytami came with backup, and even while she coaxes her instrument mournfully to life, there is something behind her.

The curly black mop of DJ Phonograff lurks behind the turntables and the glow of a laptop. His body barely moves and neither should it, for its only purpose is to provide a stable platform for a pair of hands that are moving, scratching, adjusting and fading, fixing sonic chemicals like a laboratory assistant.

The results are potent and immediate; bass builds, the drums are coming hard, and Something Enormous is surging behind Kytami's violin like an ominous weather system, a charging octopus of sound.

This beat is going places in a hurry, and it is taking people with it. Phonograff locks eyes with the violinist. She is sawing away, a small smile playing across her lips.

Phonograff ups the tempo, scratching in time. She keeps up. His lip curls. A laser beam of challenge plays between the two, and fingers fly.

Kytami's feet are planted, as though drawing strength up from the earth, her tiny body swaying as she plays. The folding table holding the DJ's turntables and computer is shaking from exerted force.

They push to the crest and stop at the same moment. The crowd goes nuts. They should. The rubber raft that once was brimming with cans of beer now holds only ice. The server's fingers are raw from cracking beer after beer. A short bandito dances in the crowd.

Kytami and Phonograff let loose. The mist swirls, the lights flash, and the beats roll on into the night.

Kytami's parents may never have anticipated this in their visions for their child. But their smoking hot daughter and a phenomenal DJ helped a lot of people forget themselves and dance their asses off the other night.

And that is a beautiful thing.


Mike Simmons

If you'd like to check out the album, send me a message and I'll mail it to you. First 2 people to ask get it for free.