It's always difficult to pick a favorite moment from Detroit's annual Concert of Colors because there are always so many great moments during the multi-day diversity and world music festival. Here are some highlights from this year's edition of the Concert of Colors:

We managed to get into the auditorium at The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History on Thursday night, which turned out to be a neat trick as reportedly half of the people who came to see the two-hour show that night couldn't get into the auditorium. The Wright's debut as a Concert of Colors venue turned out to be a great success as with a series of revue-style performances of music from across the varied African Diaspora cultures.
From rapping to traditional African drumming to Puerto Rican folkloric dance and song, the show was a high-energy dose of positive empowerment, cultural pride, and a call to unity and mutual respect among all cultures.
Rapper Mike-E advised the crowed to be "color-kind", rather than "color-blind", celebrating and respecting each other's cultural traditions.
From the Wright Museum, we walked down the street to the Scarab Club, another first-time Concert of Colors venue, to check out a bit of out the night's spoken-word and mellow jazz performances.
The Concert of Colors moved to the Detroit Institute of Arts on Friday evening to welcome Mr. B's Joybox Express to an outdoor patio.

Mr. B and the Joybox Express arrived earlier in the day, transporting their 352-pound piano and an eclectic collection of instruments in from Saugatuck, Michigan via a specially constructed trailer drawn by a custom-built tricycle.
Boogie-woogie piano music was the order of the afternoon with the Joybox Express as part of the group's drive to raise money for children's arts and athletic groups.
Hot Latin music and dance followed in the DIA's blissfully air-conditioned movie theater auditorium with Orlando "Maraca" Valle. The Cuban-born Valle brought his band of talented musicians to the stage for an evening of Cuban dance music and afro-Cuban jazz.

Dancers filled the theater's aisles and the show culminated with a group of dancers going onstage to show off some of their best salsa and cumbia moves.
There is always at least one act that surprises us each year. This year, we went to see Raion Taiko, a group from the Great Lakes Taiko Center in Novi, Michigan, performing a concert of Japanese drumming music.
You don't always think about music being specially written for drums, but this concert was a fascinating selection of music written especially for these a variety of Japanese drums and performed as an ensemble. Some of the larger drums the group used that day were created from a single piece of wood, with the largest being several feet in diameter and weighing in excess of 200 pounds!
Curious? You have a second chance to check them out this weekend with a free concert at the Detroit Institute of Art's Friday Night Live!

The Chicago-based Funkadesi filled in as a last-minute schedule addition when one of the originally scheduled acts had to cancel. The energetic world music group dished up a hot set of music, drawing from various traditions within their multi-culti cast.
The Don Was Detroit All-Star Revue is always a much-anticipated high point of the festival for us. I loved seeing classic soul singer Melvin Davis, after missing seeing him because of the cancellation of his show at the DIA earlier this summer because of a power outage. You also have a second chance to catch him at the DIA's Friday Night Live! on July 29.
Guitar virtuosos seem to do well with Revue crowds as Jim McCarty (guitarists with Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels, the Buddy Miles Express, Bob Seger, and others) earned a standing ovation for his performance this year, much as Dennis Coffey earned a similar ovation at last year's Revue show.
Martha Reeves closed out the Revue with a rousing rendition of Dancing in the Street that brought the crowd to its feet again to applaud and see her celebrate her 70th birthday by blowing out the candles atop a giant cake brought onstage at the end of the show.

The Concert of Colors' concluding Sunday brought yet another varied menu of world music, including performances that we caught ranging from the funky rhythms of the Odu Afrobeat Orchestra and Columbian folk and jazz from Pablo Mayor's Folklore Urbano Orchestra.
We eagerly anticipated Bettye LaVette's Soul and R&B that closed out the main stage offerings on Sunday evening. LaVette began recording in the early 1960s, but her career really caught fire after she won the prestigious W.C. Handy Award for "Comeback Blues Album of the Year" for A Woman Like Me in 2004.
We saw her electrifying performance in 2006 at the Detroit Festival of the Arts, so we knew we were in for a real treat.
We were not disappointed.
LaVette pretty much tore the roof off of the joint so to speak with her powerful pipes and emotional performance.
I particularly enjoyed the cuts she did from her Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook. The album contains classic rock songs like the Who's Love Reign O'er Me and Ringo Starr's It Don't Come Easy, which LaVette performed that night. I'd seen a YouTube clip of LaVette doing Love Reign O'er Me, but seeing it performed by her live took it to a whole other level for me.
The cuts on the Songbook album may be familiar, but LaVette makes each one uniquely her own with amazing arrangements and powerful performances. We bought the album at the festival, taking it home to join the other two albums we bought from her in 2006.

It was especially encouraging to see the Concert of Colors expand back into a four-day format this year, and it's interesting to see how the organizers can create such a diverse schedule of music using a lot of Detroit- and Midwest-based acts. The festival's ability to adapt and continue in the face of what everyone still acknowledges as a challenging economic climate bodes well for its future and the enjoyment of music lovers who look forward to it year-after-year.
© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved
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