Sweet Strings are the Future

For the last decade, the genre loosely described as "new music" has sounded pretty much the same as it did 1o years before that. Ho-hum. Was I really yearning for more in your face pseudo intellectual cacaphony, or did I hope I would hear a new aesthetic with some hope and meaning? Well, miracles do happen, and one just might happen this month on Avenue A in the East Village. A new string quartet called Sweet Plantain will open a listening party that promises to breathe new life and sonic relief into your holiday season.

How do I describe it? By their own definition, Sweet Plantain is a genre-blurring mix of jazz, Latin-Caribbean, classical, hip hop and improvised music, which transcends the meaningless 'jazz and everything else' label. I could blog on by trying to explain what they sound like, and it would start sounding like the pseudo-intellectual self indulgent rhetoric of so many writers who are, like the music they write about, too cool for words. Sweet Plantain is actually cooler than that without being "too cool". It's innovative without being inaccessible or painful and it delivers a compelling, universally appealing message. Multicultural? Yeah---that, too. A melody that actually goes somewhere, a beat that makes you want to dance . . . and oh, yes, music that makes you think it really is a wonderful life. But why take my word for it. Hear them live at Drom, 85 Avenue A on Saturday, November 29, starting at 7 pm. It's a listening party not to be missed---really.

For more information visit: www.dromnyc.com, (212) 777-1157, or the artists website: www.myspace.com/sweetplantain. Listen. . . the future of new music is happening Nov 29, and Sweet Plantain is that future.