With their current tour, L.A.'s Dengue Fever has broken out of the west coast circuit and graced stages across North America with their high-energy version of 60s Cambodian pop. On their stop in Chicago, they played a few shows at the 2006 World Music Festival, including a well-attended Sunday night set at Martyrs.

The Set

I'm well acquainted with the band's two albums, but what struck me live was the tight, sinewy lines laid down by bassist Senon Williams and drummer Paul Smith. Their grooves were so propulsive and full that brothers Ethan and Zac Holtzman (on Farfisa and guitar) weren't tied down to playing chords and instead were freed up to explore slinky, psychedelic melodies.

But of course the centerpiece of Dengue Fever is the amazing voice of Chhom Nimol. If you've been worn down as I have by the furtiveness and/or irony of a thousand indie singers, her sound and presence may well build you up again. Here is a singer who can... sing. On the Cambodian oldies, she leaps gaping intervals with ease while never losing the song's emotional import. On the couple of occasions that she sings in English, she sounds remarkably like Debbie Harry, with all the languid coolness that implies.

What Kind of World is This?

After the show I spoke with drummer Paul Smith, who also takes on studio production duties for the band. Our conversation revolved around the "world music" label and whether that's something Dengue Fever really wants to take on. Smith said he feels they're a rock band made of musicians who all love old Cambodian pop. We both agreed the world music scene can sometimes give off an almost puritanical vibe of being obsessed with authenticity.

On the other hand, world music festivals pay well and tend to take great care of their artists. Plus, the mere fact that a band like Dengue Fever is on the bill shows that the scene is more open minded than some might think. The Chicago World Music Festival deserves a lot of credit for putting on a show like this one. The opening act was Extra Golden, an American rock-Kenyan benga band collaboration on indie label Thrill Jockey--again, not exactly your typical drum circle fare.

I find myself feeling really encouraged by the increasing crossover between the world music and independent rock scenes--bands like Isotope 217, Antibalas, Dub is a Weapon, Nomo, etc. haven't so much broken down walls between genres, but proven that those walls were just illusions to begin with. Who did more for world music than the Clash, a "punk" band who spent their entire career on a corporate label? As numerous reissues have recently proved, African electric bands in the 70s were trying to sound like James Brown or Iron Butterfly and only started sounding more "African" around the time they learned there was a western market for it. Distinctions between genres and major vs. indie are probably more a matter of marketing than fact--to me, it all falls somewhere in the pop music continuum and real "world music" is just the big, messy sound of this ball of confusion we live on. Genres and labels can be good--the distinctions we make are helpful in identifying things we love. But it is also important to attempt the impossible and truly think globally, to wrap your mind around the complexity and interrelatedness of it all.