Beats Antique Soundsystem brings world music to Missoula

William Munoz

(Missoula Current) Beats Antique is the experimental world fusion music group whose members include David Satori, Zoe Jakes and Tommy “Sidecar” Cappel. They're known for their multi-ethnic musical styles using instruments from around the world, as well as their live shows.

Jakes, who as a dancer with jazz and ballet training, blends traditional belly dancing with tango and Indian dance. The performances are an explosion of visuals projections. The songs are percussive and heavy but far from simple.

Cappel's drumming is also a complex layering of instruments. Which brings us to the performance at the Wilma Theatre, which was billed as Beats Antique Soundsystem.

David Satori has taken a hiatus from touring (including with Dirtwire), while Zoe Jakes is active teaching and doing a minimum of Beats Antique performances. But Tommy Cappel, along with multi-instrumentalist Miles Jay (who has joined Beats Antique as Satori is pursuing other projects), have gone out on the road with a stripped-down version of Beats Antique.

As a photographer, I look forward to any concert with heavy visuals. However, as a lover of musicians who can draw on different styles, especially from different cultures, having just these two playing together allowed me to focus on the essential sounds without the 'distraction' of the visual light show.

This allowed Cappel's complex percussive beat and Jay's strings to move between frenetic intensity and melodic serenity. While I missed the spectacle of a Beats Antique concert, Cappel and Jay brought a deeper appreciation of the band's repertoire and its history of fusing different genre from around the world.

These two, without the spectacle of the normal Beats Antique concert, were able to draw the crowd into the deeper intricacies of the music while still generating movement with the audience, reminiscent of the MTV unplugged versions of rock songs. Still, I longed for the full-on Beats Antique performance.