Bitter Funeral Beer Band & Don Cherry Live In Frankfurt 82

First of all, Bengt Berger - a pioneer of the Swedish underground of the 70’s and historical member of bands such as Archimedes Badkar and Arbete Och Fritid – is a versatile drummer-percussionist and well-educated ethno-musicologist with several research sojourns in India and Ghana. Deeply influenced by Hindustani, Carnatic and West Africa music, he founded in 1980 the Bitter Funeral Beer Band, an ensemble of 12 elements, basing his ideas on the traditional funeral music of the people of Lo-Birifor, in the northern region of Ghana. The sound material reinterprets the spirit of the funeral ritual, when the dance and its songs become a moment of catharsis, releasing a sense of joy in the trance for the liberation from pain. The marriage between this Afro polyrhythmic roots, with the spiritual jazz of the eternal Don Cherry and the indian sarod of K. Sridhar, it is in the direction to a pan-internationalism of profound spirituality, which blends different geographical traditions in a single contemplative gaze. It is the convergence towards a music without boundaries, where every instrumental voice shines and is well fermented and integrated.