Club d’Elf (2019-2023)
I felt as if I had just entered a drug den in Casablanca as I walked down the stairs into the dark, red-lit, low-ceilinged basement room. As I did I expected to be enveloped by a cloud of thick smoke, with men sprawled on the floor, their eyes glazed over, smoking hookahs of hashish. But in reality, I had just walked into the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge, Massachusetts (where smoking is definitely not allowed!), to listen to and photograph the band, Club d'Elf. I had been hearing about this band for awhile, and when I finally made it to one of their Friday night residency shows, I was completely blown away.
Club d'Elf had been playing every other week at their home-base, the Lizard Lounge for the past twenty two years, and is the brain child of bassist and sintir player Mike Rivard. Along with mainstay drummer Dean (Dux) Johnston, d'Elf is made up of an ever revolving cast of musicians; singers, dancers, percussionists, guitarists, horn players, and dj’s on turntable, and you never quite know what you might be in store for on any given night. Rivard envisioned a band that wasn't built around the specificity and spotlight that frontmen usually demand, but one that would follow spontaneous cinematic soundscapes created by each member of the collective. And their sound...a complex combination of Trance, improvisational jazz, Frank Zappa, and Moroccan music, in particular the music of the Gnawa, a pre-Arabic culture in North Africa.
As I framed the musicians and crowd in my camera lens, the entire room swayed to the music, and we all listened in complete silence and with intense concentration. Everyone knew something special was happening in that moment, as we all became a part of that unique trance music, in that dark, red-lit basement room.
(For image data, click thumbnail and hover cursor over enlarged photographs)
