​Halifax Jazz fest 2013
In calling itself a "band of the people", Zulkamoon couldn't be more spot on. Whether its smooth grooves and infectious rhythms are sweetening Saturday at Halifax's Seaport Farmer's Market or packing the dance floor at any of the city's favourite venues, this band doles out upbeat earworms that'll get you moving regardless of your musical tastes.
Lucid Culture
JAZZ, CLASSICAL MUSIC AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN
We Love Halifax
What’s the likelihood of arriving in a city where you’ve never been before, then going out to three completely random shows and seeing four excellent acts? That’s what happened to us in Halifax. It’s easy to do in New York, if you know where you’re going. But Halifax, unlike New York, doesn’t hide its best music at the fringes. When we left Montreal a week ago Monday, we thought we might get a bit of a respite from the crazy party that had been the Jazz Festival there: no such luck. Halifax may be laid-back, but it’s a party town. The party restarted less than 24 hours after we got there, at Nova Scotia’s oldest pub, the Seahorse Tavern, with Zulkamoon, a skaragga band with sax and keyboards along with the usual guitar, bass and percussion. It may have been a Tuesday night, but they got a bunch of dancers bouncing in front of the stage within minutes. Charismatic singer/percussionist nti TZT delivered defiant, rapidfire lyrics in Spanish as the band blasted through grooves that ranged from frantic ska to fast cumbia to slinky reggae. Pianist Pat Storer lit up one song with some evocative wee-hour jazz phrasing while guitarist Michael Nahirnak switched effortlessly from precise shuffles to twangy surf, alto saxophonist Matthew Reiner adding a wary intensity. They’re sort of the Halifax version of Escarioka: the two ought to do a doublebill somewhere in Chile.
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THE COAST HALIFAX NEWS
Zulkamoon
Coffee and Latin music loving locals Zulkamoon pour their highly-caffeinated cumbia on this week.
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Raise a cup (of coffee) with Zulkamoon
"What's on the horizon for us? Well, we're coming out with our own coffee—we're gonna be selling it as merch," says Mike Nahirnak, one of the guitarists behind Zulkamoon's "folk, rock, blues, jazz, reggae, ska, cumbia, you name it, it's in there" sound.
Inti Gonzalez, Mexico City transplant, the other guitarist and the nucleus around which the rest of Zulkamoon orbit, opened Café Cempoal on Agricola Street earlier this year as a home for good coffee, good art and good music, so it's not as much of a mystery as you may think.
Gonzalez moved here four years ago after studying music in Mexico. He met Matthew Duncanson and Nahirnak two and a half years ago while both were playing in other bands. The three of them decided to give it a go. "We said, 'Hey, why don't we try putting something together that people can dance to? Maybe a Latin feel with some reggae, because we all enjoyed that," says Nahirnak.
Since then, the band has grown to eight or nine members and shrunk back down to five: on double guitars: Inti and Mike, with Matt on drums, along with Chris Cookson on percussion and Devon Floyd on bass. Nahirnak says they started recording an album at one point, but it was never released.
"What we recorded back then wasn't representative of the band now and we're really picky about what we wanted to put out," he says. "It was more like everyone does their own part separately instead of playing together—we wanted to do it all together in the same room to get that vibe, that energy like our live shows."
Take a listen to some of Zulkamoon's stuff online and you'll find tunes that are undeniably dancey with mercurial tempos, and so effortlessly quick-witted that by the end you're exhausted from just listening. Nahirnak assures me, though, that although their sound is fluid, "It's not necessarily been easy to do. We go with what works—we have a pretty good ear for that," he says. "Inti has a big influence on the sound, but we all kind of bring our background to the music as well."
Along with the band's launch of their own coffee—er, merch—Zulkamoon has a record coming out at the end of the summer—hopefully. "It's just a matter of getting it done in between playing shows," says Nahirnak. "We're all working stiffs, so we only have weekends to squeeze in the music." Until then, you can enjoy the complicated cadences of Zulkamoon at the Company House for the Halifax Jazz Festival.
