• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content

MASS MoCA

Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art

  • Login
  • Visit
    • Get Tickets
    • Plan Your Visit
    • FAQ & COVID Info
    • Directions
    • Groups
    • Stay
    • Eat
    • Accessibility
    • Courtesy Code
    • On Campus
    • 1040 MASS MoCA WAY North Adams, MA 01247

      Today's Hours: 10am - 5pm

  • Events
  • Exhibitions
    • Current
    • Upcoming
    • Long-Term
    • Sound Art
    • Sol LeWitt
    • Anselm Kiefer
    • Past Exhibitions
      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Sarah Oppenheimer S-334473

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Jenny Holzer Benches

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Louise Bourgeois

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        James Turrell: Into The Light

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Laurie Anderson

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Anselm Kiefer

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Sol LeWittA Wall Drawing Retrospective

      View All
  • Performing Arts
    • Upcoming Performances
    • Artists-in-Residence
    • Past Performances
      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Distanced Together

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Free Day 2023

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        La Seca: Armando Guadalupe Cortés and M. Elijah Sueuga

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Florencia Cuenca & Jaime Lozano: Broadway en Spanglish

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Armando Guadalupe Cortés with Juvenal Cortés: aún los gallos lloran

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Akoma: Jlin and Florence To

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Ivy Sole

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Eight Elements in Eight Hours Co-presented by Jacob’s Pillow

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Old Man and the Sea

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        Urban Bush Women: Haint Blu Co-presented by Jacob’s Pillow & Williams College

      • <?php the_title() ?>

        FreshGrass | North Adams 2023

      View All
  • Education
    • Main
    • Kidspace
    • Schools & Educators
    • MASS MoCA From Home
    • Families & Community
    • Adult Education
    • Museum Hours

      Wednesdays–Mondays
      10am–5pm

    • Address

      1040 MASS MoCA Way
      North Adams, MA 01247

      Subscribe
    • Contact

      413.662.2111
      info@massmoca.org

      Buy Tickets
    • Museum Hours

      Open every day
      10am–5pm
      Address

      1040 MASS MoCA Way
      North Adams, MA 01247

    • Contact

      413.MoCA.111 (413.662.2111)
      info@massmoca.org

      Buy Tickets
      Subscribe
  • About
    • Main
    • History
    • Leadership
    • Contact Us
    • On Campus
    • Assets for Artists
    • Statement on Equity and Antiracism
    • Press Room
    • Jobs & Internships
    • Host Event / Rent Space
    • Land Acknowledgment
    • Museum Hours

      Wednesdays–Mondays
      10am–5pm

    • Address

      1040 MASS MoCA Way
      North Adams, MA 01247

      Subscribe
    • Contact

      413.662.2111

      Contact Us

      Buy Tickets
    • Contact

      413.662.2111
      info@massmoca.org

      Buy Tickets
      Subscribe
    • Museum Hours

      Open every day, 10am–6pm

      Address

      1040 MASS MoCA Way
      North Adams, MA 01247

  • Shop
  • Join/Give
    • Main
    • Join Now!
    • Donate Now
    • Membership
    • Host Event / Rent Space
    • Museum Hours

      Wednesday–Monday
      10am–5pm
       

    • Contact

      413.662.2111
      info@massmoca.org

    • Buy Tickets
    • Donate Now

Janka Nabay and the Bubu Gang

  • The MASSMoCA Blog
  • Posted February 15, 2017
  • Performing Arts

For Immediate Release
15 February 2017
Contact: Jodi Joseph
Director of Communications
413.664.4481 x8113
jjoseph@massmoca.org

 

Janka Nabay and the Bubu Gang

Ancient rhythm, good vibes bash

NORTH ADAMS, MASSACHUSETTS — Claiming the holy trinity of Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, and God as his primary inspirations, Sierra Leonean singer Janka Nabay has almost single-handedly revived the ancient tradition of Bubu, updating a form with 500-year-old roots in magic-infused folk ceremony into frenetic, hypnotic dance music with flourishes of electronica. Nabay, a recent pick-up by David Byrne’s record label, brings the fun to MASS MoCA on Saturday, March 11, at 8pm — seating is limited, but there’s lots of room to get groovy.

Bubu music, an ancient Sierra Leonean call-and-response style of folk music influenced by the 18th-century regional introduction of Islam, was all but forgotten before Nabay brought it back to life in the mid-’90s. A native of Sierra Leone, Nabay enjoyed widespread popularity with his Bubu music that incorporated traditional bamboo flutes and metal pipes with electronic instrumentation in the first instances of recorded Bubu music. When civil war broke out in Sierra Leone, Nabay used his music to speak out against the spiraling violence, but when it was co-opted by rebels during their campaigns of destruction through rural villages, Nabay left his homeland behind and sought refuge in the United States.

After an embattled musical stint in Washington D.C., Nabay took to local stages throughout New York City, inspiring an eclectic group of musicians to fall in love with his frenetic style of Bubu-infused dance music. “We speak one language now,” Nabay says of collaborating with stars of the Brooklyn indie-rock scene who make up the Bubu Gang. A full band, comprised of members of stalwart New York bands Chairlift, Skeletons, Highlife, and Saadi, grew out of his spreading popularity.

In 2012, the band signed to Byrne’s label Luaka Bop, releasing En Yah Say that year. The label has just announced a new album in 2017, Build Music, that is more studio focused, further bringing electronic and modern influences to the fore. Since Janka Nabay and the Bubu Gang’s first performances in 2010, the group has been infusing polyrhythmic folk tunes with high-octane psychedelia in shows characterized as “…the beat, fast and skeletal and driven by bell taps, was unstoppable, demanding wider dissemination” (The New York Times). While Nabay has evolved into a bandleader and MC in the tradition of James Brown and Fela Kuti, his poly-cultural sound draws as much from Nabay’s traditional Bubu as it does from the sunny energy of Ghanaian highlife, the extended improvisations of ‘70s Miles Davis, the hypnotic rhythms of classic Afro-beat, and the swirling shredding guitars of ’60s and ‘70s psychedelia.

Join us for good vibes and a night of dancing with Janka Nabay and the Bubu Gang on Saturday, March 11, at 8pm. Lickety Split, MASS MoCA’s café, serves up crisp salads, hearty soups, and lip-smacking pub fare before the seated theater show. A full bar serves Bright Ideas Brewing beers and Berkshire Mountain Distillery spirits throughout the performance. Tickets are $10 for students, $16 advance, $22 day of, and $28 preferred. Tickets for all events are available through the MASS MoCA box office located on Marshall Street in North Adams, open 11am to 5pm every day except Tuesdays. Tickets can also be charged by phone by calling 413.662.2111 during box office hours or purchased online at massmoca.org.

Images
High-resolution images of MASS MoCA’s winter/spring 2017 events are available through this link.

About MASS MoCA
MASS MoCA is one of the world’s liveliest (and largest) centers for making, displaying, and enjoying today’s most important art, music, dance, theater, film, and video. MASS MoCA will nearly double its gallery space in spring 2017, with artist partnerships that include Laurie Anderson, the Louise Bourgeois Trust, Jenny Holzer, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and James Turrell.

Gallery admission is $18 for adults, $16 for veterans and seniors, $12 for students, $8 for children 6 to 16, and free for children 5 and under, through May 21, 2017. Members are admitted free year-round. The Hall Art Foundation’s Anselm Kiefer exhibition is open seasonally, spring–fall. For additional information, call 413.662.2111 x1 or visit massmoca.org.

Hours
11am to 5pm, closed Tuesdays

Download the Janka Nabay press release.

TAKE PART

Newsletter sign-up
Mass MoCA Instagram Mass MoCA Facebook Mass MoCA Twitter
LOGIN ABOUT HOST EVENTS / OFFICE SPACE PRIVACY POLICY

It is with gratitude and humility that we acknowledge that the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) rests on the ancestral homelands of the Muhheaconneok or Mohican people (People of the Waters That Are Never Still) and the Wabanaki peoples. Despite tremendous hardship in being forcibly relocated from these lands by Dutch, English, and US colonizers, today the Muhheaconneok or Mohican community resides in Wisconsin and is known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community The Wabanaki Confederacy, also known as The People of the Dawnland, include the Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, and Abenaki Nations, who are indigenous to the lands with the English placenames Maine, Vermont, northwestern Massachusetts, and parts of Canada, and continue to reside in these areas. We pay honor and respect to these ancestors past and present as we commit to building a more inclusive and equitable space for all. More information can be found here.

MASS MoCA

1040 MASS MoCA WAY
North Adams, MA 01247

413.662.2111

info@massmoca.org

Copyright © 2023 Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art

MASS MoCA Sponsors
Mohawk Trail Region MCC Barr Foundation Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism New England Foundation for the Arts National Endowment for the Arts