PORT ANGELES — It feels like a current pulsing beneath you, a river filled with African rhythms, lifting your feet — and then in comes another creature: a Celtic fiddle, skipping across like a water bug.
This is the ecosystem of sound known as Baka Beyond: a band that helped advance the idea of “world music.” It’s also the outfit on its way to Port Angeles to give an admission-by-donation concert Thursday, the eve of the 19th annual Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts.
Guitar man Martin Cradick and his wife, singer Su Hart, brought Baka Beyond to the world’s attention nearly 20 years ago with “Spirit of the Forest,” an album inspired by life with the Baka Pygmy tribe of Cameroon.
The couple has been returning to the Baka rain forest ever since, to learn more about music, dance and community — and with their band of musicians from Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States, they continue to spread their hybrid music across the globe.
This week Baka Beyond has three gigs in Port Angeles: the 7:30 p.m. Thursday concert at the Vern Burton Community Center, 308 W. Fourth St.; workshops for local schoolchildren all day Friday and, during the Juan de Fuca Festival proper, the 8:15 p.m. Saturday concert on the Vern Burton center’s main stage.
“We would really like it if you dance,” Hart says in a video on BakaBeyond.net — and then she demonstrates, a willowy blonde swaying and skipping to the beat.
Thursday’s concert is “the Juan de Fuca’s gift to the community,” executive director Dan Maguire said, adding that admission is a donation of $5 to $15, though nobody will be turned away.
Friday, some 1,800 elementary school kids will arrive for three workshops led by the band at the Vern Burton. They will be bused in, 500 to 600 at a time, for a course in rhythmic patterns and song, Baka Beyond style.
The group, featuring Sierra Leonean percussionist Ayodele Scott and Jeremy Kittel’s Ireland-infused fiddling — rocks out, said Maguire — and then comes the yelli singing, a form of yodeling Hart learned from the Baka women.
“You start out thinking, wow, this is a really great band,” Maguire said. “Then they start that, and you say, ‘This is amazing.’”
With Baka’s performances — dance parties if the band has its way — the tone will be set for the Juan de Fuca Festival, which Maguire envisions as not just a series of concerts, but an immersion in cultures from around the world.
Those who come to Thursday’s Baka show will of course be able to buy tickets for the festival that starts Friday and runs through Monday; Thursday night they will still be available for $55, and then will go up to $60 once the event is under way.
Baka Beyond’s Saturday night concert is one of 75 performances at eight downtown Port Angeles venues, including the Vern Burton center, the CrabHouse and the Elks Lodge at First and Lincoln streets.
The Juan de Fuca festival also offers visual art shows and hands-on workshops, Zumba dance classes, yoga, a street fair with food and art vendors and free outdoor performances.
For the complete list of events and the musical lineup — which goes from Thomas Mapfumo and Allen Stone to Blame Sally to the Portland Cello Project to Abby Mae & the Homeschool Boys — see www.JFFA.org, phone 360-457-5411 or visit the Juan de Fuca Festival’s Facebook page.
Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345 ext. 5062 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
