Lo Cor de la Plana

Hailing from Marseille, a notoriously wide-open port historically teeming with immigrants from all over the Mediterranean and far beyond, Lo Còr de la Plana (literally, the heart of La Plaine, their home neighborhood) is six male singers who weave a raucous, often dizzying, polyphonic, a cappella storm of ricocheting voices that sound both deeply traditional and contemporary. Rhythms are inherent in their ferocious phrasing, but they also accompany themselves on hand drums, tambourines, foot stomping, and hand clapping. It's overflowing with energy and irreverent spirit, feeding off often-satirical lyrics that recount ancient and modern tales about tricking death, lecherous spinsters, neglected brides, bad influences, and a guy who gets zapped in the ass by lightning for insisting he isn't, as the title claims, "Feniant E Gromand"—lazy and greedy. The sextet sings all this in Occitan, an endangered language of southern France that was once the favored tongue of medieval poets. Exploding from the mouths of these guys is a roiling combination of Gregorian chants, madrigals, dissonance, call-and-response patterns, refined harmonies, shouts, and rapid-fire deliveries that suggest a kinship to Jamaican toasting and hip hop, and stylistic threads that seem to wander in from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Iberia, and Africa. It's unique and endlessly fascinating.
Sat., March 28, 8 p.m., 2009