In this glitchy, twitchy era of blurred micro-genres, it takes some real hoodoo to keep a crowd gyrating to the same groove for three and a half hours. But by the time the Fu-Arkist-Ra wrapped up their set at 92Y Tribeca a few weeks back, any semblance of a tyrannically periodic time flow had already been thwarted by more natural rhythms. Bandleader Amayo extended a hand to his 13 performers and, with a fifth-century cheironomer's twist of the wrist, extracted pitches, moods, tempos, and hours of fatigue. The musicians formed a crescent around center-stage, where dancers flailed like B-girls emulating a Maoli war chant. Most imposing was the tremendous Chinese lion mask suspended above the piano, that much more out of place thanks to Amayo's Afrocentrist lyrics ("Dumping on Mother Africa is like dumping in my mother's womb!") and the fact that the ensemble was playing Afrobeat, a genre that has never much bothered with the Eastern... More >>>