Culture Club A2VT introduce African hip-hop to Vermont
O
the team, all clad in bright-yellow jerseys, flood the dance floor, gyrating and stomping with gleeful abandon. For the next two hours, this is less a rehearsal than an all-out dance party. Then again, given the infectious rhythms and hooks found on the band’s debut album, Africa, Vermont, it may be good practice: There’s a strong chance A2VT’s CD release party this Friday, July 27, will be more of a hip-hop dance party than is your typical concert at Studio A. A2VT, meaning Africa to Vermont, is composed of three African refugees who now live in Winooski: Bulle, George Mnyonge and Cadoux Fanoy. Each moved to Vermont as a teenager — Bulle from Somalia and Kenya, Mnyonge from a refugee camp in Tanzania, and Fanoy from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Brought together by music, they represent the youthful face of an increasingly diverse African refugee community in Vermont. The trio’s debut album is an electric and multilingual mix of African and Western beats, flows and melodies. It reflects the young men’s varied experiences assimilating into their adopted home, and offers a glimpse of the struggles that African refugees face here.
28 FEATURE
SEVEN DAYS
07.25.12-08.01.12
SEVENDAYSVT.COM
n a recent Saturday afternoon in July, local hip-hop trio A2VT are rehearsing for an upcoming concert at Studio A on North Winooski Avenue in Burlington’s Old North End. The band’s three members and a guest percussionist wait onstage, visibly eager to begin, as David Cooper preps the sound system. Said Bulle leans in to his microphone, which has just shorted out. “Uncle Dave,” he calls out to Cooper, still speaking into his dead mic. “It’s not working.” “Yup. I know,” replies a harried Cooper from the sound booth at the back of the hall. “I’m on it.” Bulle taps the mic and grins. “I hope so, Uncle Dave,” he teases, his Somali accent bending the last word in singsong fashion. A few minutes later, sound quirks ironed out, the bombastic strains of the band’s self-titled theme song, “A2VT,” fill the hall as they begin practicing. But this is no ordinary rehearsal. Scattered around the room are about 30 members of a Somali refugee soccer team from Portland, Maine, who happen to be in town for a match. Somehow they heard that a group of African refugees would be playing hip-hop at the studio that day. As the band launches in to the song’s refrain, several members of
BY DAN BOLLES
A2VT release Africa, Vermont this Friday, July 27, 8 p.m. at Studio A in Burlington. $5. AA.
Left to right: Said Bulle, George Mnyonge, Cadoux Fanoy PHOTO COURTESY OF BRENDAN MCINERNEY
The album is available at Pure Pop in Burlington and Barnes & Noble in South Burlington.