The Brass Messengers, NOMO

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More About

• Ann Arbor
• Halloween

The best way to describe the Brass Messengers is through a litany of basic facts -- they're a brass band, there's eleven of them, and you can see them playing around town at a number of events ranging from political gatherings to theater productions (like their memorable scoring of BareBones' recent Halloween puppet extravaganza "Devoured"). Once you get into the attempts to describe their music in genre terms, then things get tangled: their music leaps across eras and continents, prying out the lines from between Eastern European and Romany music to fit in Latin, highlife and Americana. It's a joyous sound, and the only downside to confining it in the Cedar's four walls is the fact that they're often best heard walking down the middle of the street. Adding to the horn-driven indoor-parade feel will be Ann Arbor, Michigan's NOMO, an energetic Afrobeat-based group that's never content to stay fixed to the stage.
Fri., Nov. 20, 8 p.m., 2009