The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 26

MONDAY, JUNE 23, 2014 D3 LATIMES.COMCALENDAR Getting the plaza crowd moving os Angeles (Times Angelique Kidjo connects in the challenging Grand Performances space. JHHiF wtt iPllifHL JBHIv 3LJHH some power with her in the form of guitarist and secret weapon Dominic James, a heavy hitter of soukous and high-life guitar best known for co-writing singer Shaki-ra's 2010 World Cup anthem "Waka Waka." In his delicate runs were a mix of styles fromacrossthe cluster ofthe region's countries, including Nigeria, Mali, Senegal and Sierra Leone. That Kidjo connected so fully on Friday night is no small feat. California Plaza can be a tough place for dance music. At most venues, the area in front of the stage is a dance floor.

At Grand Performances, that space is occupied by a big half-moon shaped moat separating performer and crowd, dead space that can hinder connection. It wasn't a problem for Kidjo. When she sang, a space as big as the universe seemed to open in her voice box, pushing forth pitch-perfect notes that were less gymnastic bravado than they were stable, marble-dense platforms. During "Bana," which features a sample of her late mother singing, you could have constructed a high-rise on Kidjo's sustained note. Behind her a fountain shot four-story bursts of water that occasionally locked with the rhythms.

The artist hit a peak near the end when, after making her way around the pond and into the crowd, she sang as she greeted people until she'd gathered a hefty tribe of dancers, who followed her back to the stage. As the band moved into the mesmerizing "Tumba," from her 2002 record "Black Ivory Soul," a dozen-plus audience members strutted their best moves. Gradually, percussionist Magatte Sow, holding a talking drum under his arm and popping it in rhythm, made his way to the center. Squeezing it to create warbled beats while he pounded, the Los Angeles-based Sow traded turns with the dancers, him delivering beats while they responded. To the side, Kidjo watched as she drove her feet into the ground, a messenger delivering righteousness on the wings of music while she and the crowd, lost in borderless music that transcended language, chanted "Tumba, tumba, tumba, yo!" randall.roberts latimes.com Twitter: liledit RANDALL ROBERTS Midway through Angelique Kidjo's joyous, insistent concert as part of the annual Grand Performances series in downtown Los Angeles, the Benin-born singer and bandleader paused to address the thousands surrounding her.

Speaking into a microphone that she described as her "weapon of mass loving," one that had already delivered typically powerful singing through a few songs, she urged the thousands in attendance to educate themselves on the plight of the African woman. "We could transform Africa for real if we could educate our women," she said with an unwavering voice as convincing as it was true a tone that remained consistent on Friday whether singing, spinning and grooving in rhythm or speaking. Performing in support of her recent album "Eve" and new autobiography, "Spirit Rising: My Life, My Music," Kidjo jumped between singing in French, Swahili, English, Yoruba and her own invented language, offering aural history accrued through her years absorbing the indigenous rhythms of Benin and beyond. The result was a resonant, practiced show that combined glistening West African guitar pop, Afrobeat and rock with Kidjo's buoyant voice. Such has been the case since the Grammy-winning singer emerged from Paris in the early 1990s, her African roots combining with the city's multiculturalism to create a cosmopolitan blend.

Through early hits "Botonga" and "Agolo," nearly a dozen solo albums and globe-trotting collaborations with artists including Manu Dibango, Cassandra Wilson, Gilberto Gil, Alicia Keys and many others, Kidjo has built a substantial, impressive body of work. That sturdiness defined her set, a mix of music from throughout her career. Kidjo and her four-piece band at this point understand how to move open-air crowds to dance. When they commanded it, it was so. But then she brought Barbara Davidson Los Angeles Times bandleader Angelique Kidjo sings at California Plaza in Gathering of the EDM tribes in FANS take it all in during Gareth Emery's gig at the Electric Daisy Carnival.

HHHyUjlW iMHittv jimb IHHII BENIN-BORN singer and ren remixing the hook off "Let It Go" from Disney's "Frozen," Steve Aoki barely touching his mix console and instead chucking layer cakes at his fans. Tiesto took a hard turn into Top 40 on his new album, "A Town Called Paradise," and its single "Wasted" has already achieved total ubiquity in both Vegas taxicab ads and on EDCs Kinetic Field (even if its seemingly party-hearty chorus lyric of "I like us better when we're wasted" had an uncommon touch of bleakness). More interesting musical moments were humming on the side stages, or at the precipice of stardom. Russian producer Arty was an early signing to EDC promoter Insomniac's new major-label imprint with Inter-scope. LP sales are largely incidental to EDM success, downtown Los Angeles.

Vegas by a carload of giddy ravers who let him ride with them back to the Vegas Strip. It was a gesture of youthful trust that embodied EDC at its best. And if your moment of EDC bliss happened on Interstate 15 in a stranger's sedan, as a yearning Florence and the Machine remix welcomed the desert sunrise and home was finally in sight, well, then that was as real as anything happening on the field. august.brown latimes.com Twitter: AugustBrown Musical surprises are few at the Electronic Daisy Carnival. It's all about the vibe, bro.

By August Brown LAS VEGAS Around 7 a.m. Saturday, as the pink and orange dawn ascended over Sunrise Mountain, two exhausted-looking bros walked out of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Shirtless, board-shorted and weary behind their aviator sunglasses, they'd made it through the first night of the Electric Daisy Carnival, the dance-music bacchanal that has become America's largest multiday music festival. One guy turned to the other as they walked to their car in the dusty parking lot. "Bro," he said, "I don't know if EDC is ready for two more days of me." True words, bro.

Because therein lies the real pleasure of this sprawling, messy, neon-ravaged gathering of the tribes (state-school frat-ties, serious ravers, Burning Man casualties, tarted-up club girls). It all really does feel like it's meant to please an audience of one. For the estimated 400,000 fans who attended the three-day event, EDC weekend is an occasion for good-natured, unstructured communal revelry. There is dance music, obviously established arena-fillers such as Tiesto, Avicii, Kas-kade and Armin Van Buu-ren; the rising class of superstars like Hardwell, Arty and Alesso; and thoughtful, chal TIESTO spins a number from the kinectField stage during the festival at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. but his mix of big-tent EDM sonics and moving songwrit-ing could prove a potent force in pop.

The beat-music provocateur 12th Planet inventively smashed hip-hop, trap, dubstep and noise into one adrenaline-soaked house party; L.A. duo Bixel Boys had a sporty swagger that felt true to EDCs moment of dudes hugging it out under candy-pink fluorescence. The most compelling stretches took place in the underground-focused Neon Garden. Cox played multiple sets over the weekend, each time charging the night with muscular yet musical vintage house. Beyer took a noisier, sparser path to a similar place, while his peer Loco Dice plied reverbed-out moods punctuated with subsonic kick drums.

As fans, artists and even lenging mood-setters like Art Department, Carl Cox and Adam Beyer. But the attraction for most fans is simply existing among all those barely clad bodies and retina-popping visuals. Not even a fatality early Saturday that of a 24-year-old California man whose cause of death is under investigation seemed to affect fans gathered at the main stages. Musical surprises were relatively few. Most of its top-tier headliners have played recent EDCs or other local fests like Coachella and Hard.

(The folk-dabbling Avicii even played this year's KROQ Weenie Roast, a sign of EDM gentrifying nearly every neighborhood in pop music.) The big-stage pleasures of the first two nights were reliably populist Van Buu- Insomniac founder Pas-quale Rotella have noted, however, the music is if not a secondary concern mostly now just the backdrop. Some in the crowd danced with pagan pleasure. One drunk couple got in a screaming fit and broke up beneath an incandescent snail sculpture. For some, the most memorable bit might have been the epic line to get a taxi home at the end of the first night. One reviewer, at close to a mental breaking point while in line for a taxi, was rescued.