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11 AM Claudia Cassidy Theater

Jayme Stone & Mansa Sissoko Canadian banjoist Jayme Stone and Malian kora player Mansa Sissoko have obviously mastered the musical traditions they attempt to fuse on their recent self-released album, Africa to Appalachia. And combining circular Mande rhythms with rural American folk, though an odd choice at first glance, actually makes sense if you remember that the banjo evolved from African instruments. But despite Stone and Sissoko’s talent and taste, their project never transcends its conceptual baggage—to my ears it sounds self-conscious, with the two musics just diluting each other. —PM

Mohsen Namjoo Listening to this Iranian singer could convince you that no rock music recorded since the early 70s has ever made it to his country. Mohsen Namjoo has a strong voice and frequently borrows phrasing from traditional Persian music, but all too often he lapses into an overwrought style that’s a painfully perfect match for his band’s hackneyed hard-rock guitar, florid piano, and incredibly stiff rhythm section. In his bio he says he learned how to sing by listening to Doors records—more proof that there’s no substitute for a good education. —PM

12:30 PM Claudia Cassidy Theater 

Lo Cor de la Plana This sextet from Marseilles, France, which sings in the fading Occitan tongue, updates the traditional religious vocal music of the region, borrowing influences from all over the Mediterranean and jacking up the tunes with ferocious percussion—vigorous stomping, precise hand claps, and intricate beats played on bendirs and tambourellas. It’s the vocals, though, that take center stage: on Tant Deman (Buda) the singers create fleet polyphonic flurries of bass patterns, contrapuntal harmonies, and sharp unison melodies. —PM

[Dunkelbunt] German dance-music producer Shantel was the first to push Balkan music onto hipster turf with his Bucovina Club nights, and Viennese producer Ulf Lindemann has jumped on that bandwagon as [Dunkelbunt]. On Morgenlandfahrt (Chat Chapeau) the former drum ’n’ bass DJ combines contributions from artists like Fanfare Ciocarlia, the Amsterdam Klezmer Band, and Orient Expressions with contemporary club rhythms, so that bits of Romani, Jewish, and Ottoman styles rub shoulders with drum ’n’ bass, digital dub, and dancehall. But he doesn’t seem to bring much to the table himself—when he has weak collaborators, his fusions sound feeble. —PM

5:30 PM Museum of Contemporary Art terrace 

Jayme Stone & Mansa Sissoko See above.

7 PM Conaway Center 

Edmar Castaneda Quartet At the 2004 World Music Festival, where he backed singer Marta Topferova, Colombian harpist Edmar Castaneda didn’t just steal the show; he practically upstaged everyone else playing all week. He’s a veritable orchestra all by himself—he’s fitted his arpa llanero with two pickups, one for the upper register and one for the lower, to spotlight his ability to play melodies and bass lines simultaneously—and on his self-released Cuarto de Colores he’s backed by several different lineups, all of which have mastered his dazzling fusion of jazz and joropa, the traditional music of the plains of Colombia and Venezuela. A couple years ago in Panama I heard his trio from that album—the same group he’s bringing to Chicago—and it was nothing short of a revelation. Castaneda’s lyric improvisations arrive in quicksilver bursts, dancing over the crisp pulse of drummer Dave Silliman, who casually drops pan-Latin accents while reinforcing the music’s swinging groove. Resourceful trombonist Marshall Gilkes can play jazz standards with a warm, full-bodied tone, but he can also create novel effects, even imitating a Brazilian cuica. Castaneda’s wife, Andrea Tierra, will make the band a quartet here, adding her sanguine vocals to several pieces. —PM

7 PM Instituto Cervantes $15 donation requested

La Musgaña See Monday 9/22.

7:30 PM Museum of Contemporary Art $15

Lo Cor de la Plana See above.

Alessandra Belloni In most European music you can hear a tension between the Apollonian and the Dionysian; the Western classical tradition represents a fairly clear victory for the former, but Italian percussionist, singer, and dancer Alessandra Belloni (an artist-in-residence at St. John’s Cathedral of the Divine in New York) has thrown her lot in with the underdogs. Most of us may doubt the Maenads ever existed, but she airs their torn, bloodstained deerskins and makes of them a glorious work of art. She’s studied south Italian percussion for years, traveling remote parts of the countryside to learn ritual songs and dances from elders who remember them, and the repeating spiritual and magical themes of her music—the power of the Black Madonna, the erotic agonies of the “tarantella,” the poison bite of love—give it a tribal fire that makes it sound thrillingly unmapped and untamed, despite its roots in one of the most familiar cultures of Europe. —MK

8 PM Martyrs’ $15, 21+

Prasanna’s Electric Ganesha Land Ensemble Though other musicians have adapted to the guitar to play Indian classical music—Brij Kabra, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Debashish Bhattacharya—Prasanna takes it one step further by using an electric axe, articulating the style’s characteristic microtones with inhumanly precise fretwork. On a classical CD of his that I’ve heard, he plays with a liquid, ringing tone that reminds me of the great Indian mandolinist U. Srinivas; both of them create fluid improvisations that hug the music’s rhythmic and melodic contours the way water follows a creek bed. But Prasanna has always been interested in other styles, and he’s worked extensively in jazz; he recently performed at the Chicago Jazz Festival with pianist Vijay Iyer. In this project, documented on the 2006 album Electric Ganesha Land (Susila Music)—yes, it’s a Hendrix homage—he takes Carnatic music into the realm of distortion pedals and hammer-ons, sounding less like Kabra and more like Vernon Reid. Sometimes the power chords and lightning runs can get to be a bit much, but he still plays plenty of beautifully melodic, zigzagging improvisations in that clean, clarion tone. —PM

Mohsen Namjoo See above.

9 PM Uncommon Ground on Devon 

Jayme Stone & Mansa Sissoko See Tuesday 9/23.

10 PM Empty Bottle $10, 21+

[Dunkelbunt] See above.

Black Bear Combo This local quintet, which applies the anarchic aesthetics of art punk and free jazz to eastern European dance music, has more fun with an accordion and a sousaphone than is probably legal. They suffer on occasion from a strain of the same too-many-notes disease that afflicts many fusion bands—they’re all impressive musicians, despite their ragtag sound—but they neutralize its worst effects with raucous, good-natured playfulness. —MK

DJ Gitana Angela This local DJ describes her sets as a mix of “Gypsy music, reggae, high energy Balkan brass, klezmer, kumbia poder, latin sextura, ragga muffin, salsa, Indian, Arabica, Turkish, Gypsy cabaret, Serbian, Hun­garian, Romanian, Russian, Macedonian brass, flamenco and rumbas.” What, no chalga? —PM

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