Vibes for a Cause at the Asamblea Popular Detroit Benefit Concert in Hamtramck
With the warm weather came a warm feeling of community on Saturday, March 7th, at the High Dive in Hamtramck. Asamblea Popular Detroit and Drew from Peace Sign Hands organized a night of strong community and cultural connections, and an opportunity to support direct aid for people in our community facing political and ethnic oppression. The night brought together the aforementioned Peace Sign hands, Little Fly, and Sean and Diego to create an eclectic yet electric showcase of talent right within our community spaces.
PEACE SIGN HANDS
The first act of the night was the aptly named Peace Sign Hands. While I can’t say for sure I ever saw the band’s creative heart, Drew, throw up the namesake symbol, he is definitely the kind of person who would, and in doing so would cast a wave of reassuring peace across the crowd who saw it. His music was gentle, bendy, and open in a way that reminds you of a young tree blowing in the wind. One feature of his playing I especially liked was the breezy sweeps, making the guitar almost feel like it as picking up on a crosswind rather than being played by a presumably plastic pick. Peace Sign Hands is the kind of music that reminds you of a walkable city filled with thousands of people in your age demographic: long sunny 64° 1pms in a hammock, late nights in liminal spaces.
Drew himself is as kind and gentle as his music. Having organized the night and curated a space so welcoming, Drew exemplified how culture, art, and community are all essential parts of creating a world by and for everyone. As a benefit concert for the Asamblea Popular/Peoples Assembly Detroit, the concert not only hosted great bands, but a silent auction as well as multiple fundraising and outreach opportunities to get members of the crowd connected to the aforementioned Assembly, workers’ rights, socialist, and community organizing groups in general. Following Peace Sign Hand’s set, Lindsey from the AP Detroit gave a brief speech on the importance of these organizations and how to support them as the reality of ICE oppression grows in our city.
If you are interested in supporting these organizations, crucial to the defense and protection of your neighbors, please consider donating to them (donation links available in their Instagram Bio) or engaging with the many other resources and opportunities they share.
LITTLE FLY
We take for granted that the most common verb used to talk about music is play. We don’t work music, we don’t labor at music, we play it. Detroit’s Little Fly does not take this for granted. The three-piece played music to its fullest meaning, singing, plucking strings, spinning overturned cymbals, then tossing in some pocket change, squeezing boxes I’ve never seen before, tube-in-mouth, melodica-in-hand. The resulting sounds are liberated, light, an expression of joy and growth, the kind of growth that only comes from curious experimentation.
Indira, the creative force behind Little Fly, carried such a positive and infectious energy in the show, absolutely beaming through the set. Little Fly was one of those groups that are so easy to photograph and write about because they truly enjoy the music that they make, and it shows so effortlessly in the show they put on. If you get a chance to see them perform in person, definitely check it out; they put on a show that is hard to capture in words, and while their Bandcamp offerings are excellent, they do not capture the absolutely wonderful vibe their set creates.
SEAN AND DIEGO
The final group to grace the space was the improvisational noise duo, Sean and Diego. Their stage presence was more akin to that of two highly trained bomb defusal experts. From the wire-packed suitcases and lunchboxes lain out before them came sounds reflective of this technical, engineered style. As opposed to playing music, the pair concocted soundscapes that seemed to both hold still in time and continuously shift from one place to the next. For a moment, you would find yourself locked in the depths of some long-decaying spaceship, hearing unnerving creaks and pings from behind the steel walls. You would then find those same creaks and pings twisting and flowing until from them came chirps and cracks, taking you from the once cold interior to a dripping, pulsing, humid alien jungle.
All the while Sean and Diego would hop back and forth, twisting knobs, moving wires, hitting buttons on panels hidden behind suitcase lids, looking up from their diligent work occasionally to assess the room, maybe to catch a breath of air before diving back into the now futuristic marine drift their devices were sinking into, a de-evolution of the once bristling primeval sound they had created. I swear, at the end, there was a moment where they had the room fully convinced that not only were ghosts real, but that their domain was mixing (not Ouija) boards.
The group’s elusive sound, and maybe their one-man marketing team wandering the venue carrying their work, compelled me to buy a CD to make sure I would be able to hear them again. I am happy to report that, after getting home and playing it, and after a couple of minutes of curiosity, my dog happily curled up on the couch next to me and joined in on the listening session/photo editing spree. It seems like the evanescent nature of their sound makes for a trans-species hit.
Outside a handful of Bandcamp singles, all three of these artists are exclusively live experiences (remember the good old days when all culture wasn’t always available all the time in the palm of your hand?), so follow Peace Sign Hands, Little Fly, and Sean and Diego on Instagram for updates on future shows.