Don't know if anyone's ever mentioned this band before but I caught them on the PBS series Sierra Center Stage tonight...

Some bands defy categorization on purpose; Chicago's Sonia Dada do it naturally. Songwriter/guitarist Dan Pritzker has taken a trio of African American gospel singers he discovered performing for free at a subway station and blended their sound with a talented jam band to create an intoxicating blend of R&B, pop, and worldbeat that is truly unique. Lyrics that make you think; a groove that makes you want to dance - this is truly a show you can't miss.

...http://www.sierranevada.c...tists.html

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Speaking with Dan Pritzker
Chicago Sun-Times, Nov 5, 2004 by Jeff Wisser

Since releasing their eponymous debut in 1992, Chicago-based Sonia Dada has made a name for itself both locally and nationally with its stirring, surprising blend of rock, soul, funk, blues and gospel. And, with its sixth and latest release "Test Pattern," these local heroes have added Middle Eastern sounds to the irresistible mix.

A Chicago native, Dan Pritzker is guitarist and principal songwriter with the five-instrument and four-vocalist band that began to take shape in 1990 when he encountered Michael Scott, Paris Delane and Sam Hogan harmonizing on a local L platform at State and Chicago. Two years later, Sonia Dada's first album, along with the radio hit "You Don't Treat Me No Good" hit record stores and another couple years after that, an extensive U.S. tour with Traffic started to get the word out across the country.

Gearing up for a homecoming gig Saturday at the Vic, Pritzker spoke from his Chicago home.

HERE'S WHAT PRITZKER HAD TO SAY:

A chance meeting in the subway: When I heard those guys singing down there, it just knocked me out. I think the first thing I heard was "Jesus on the Mainline," and I knew that song was from the Ry Cooder record "Paradise and Lunch." And I had never heard it before that and for all I knew it was a Ry Cooder song, but now I know better. And I heard these guys singing that and thought, Hey, that's great. So I stood there. The thing was, while they were singing, trains were starting to come in, right? So it's, Get to the chorus before the train comes. But as the train would start to come in, they would switch the song into that Curtis Mayfield song, ["People Get Ready"], "People get ready/there's a train a-coming." And the way they did it, it was, Wow, these guys got a whole subway act! So I stood there for about 20 minutes and my jaw was to the floor.

What he learned from producer Chuck Plotkin: You might have a great song and a great singer, but they don't necessarily marry.

On meeting the late free jazz legend Lester Bowie, who plays on "Test Pattern": I ended up picking up Lester at the airport. I'd never met the guy, never seen the guy before, right? And I went downstairs at O'Hare Airport and I illegally parked my car, I just got out and I went into the baggage [area] to look for the guy. Didn't know what he looked like, right? Here comes a black guy with a shock of white hair standing straight up and a braided goatee. And I thought, You know what, I'm gonna take a shot. I said, "Lester?" And he said, "Yes." So as soon as I indentified him, I hauled ass back out to the car and they were backing up the tow truck but they hadn't put the hook on. And I ran in the car and I dodged the bullet and the guy yelled at me and all that sort of thing. But I would've been to have had my car towed away in front of Lester.

Operating in close quarters: We've got, basically, nine players. We take 13 guys on a 12-bunk bus. Don't ask.

On keeping a big band at peace, even in close quarters: Ah, the Dispute Resolution Mechanism! (Laughs) We just get along. It's an amazing chemistry. It's really cool. It's one of the joys of my life in that regard. I don't know what else to tell you. It works out great. It's the luckiest thing and believe me, I'm well aware that life's too short to spend your time being miserable. If this were a situation that sort of taxed my misery meter in any way, I would be gone.

http://findarticles.com/p..._n12566293
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Sonia Dada deserves its really cool name
Music Notes: Rashod D. Ollison

August 26, 2004


THE NAME is cool: Sonia Dada. It has a nice melodic ring to it. If repeated over and over, it sounds like a prayer chant or something.

Dan Pritzker dug the name, so he decided to give it to his seven-piece band. Before I asked the songwriter-guitarist about its origin, I thought I would get some long, winding story about the group's otherworldly mission and how Sonia Dada is the name of a star that burns in the east every other year and inspires the band to make music that defies categorization. Or something like that.

Actually, Sonia Dada, Pritzker tells me, is the name of his wife's childhood friend, a Jordanian girl.

"I thought it sounded musical and mellifluous," says Pritzker, who's calling from Chicago.

Test Pattern, the group's sixth and latest album, isn't as sweet-sounding as the band's name. But it's definitely charged. The styles vary and converge song to song, and the performances are inspired throughout. On the album, Sonia Dada throws in everything but a smoked ham hock: you find rave-up gospel, country blues, a little jazz improvisation, a wash of tablas, sitars, mandolins, electro bleeps and pulsing world beats. Rhythmic, ambient layers swirl beneath each track, giving the tunes a slight futuristic feel. And each song radiates a keen sense of melody.

"If you don't have the melody in a song, it's like a ladder with no rungs," Pritzker says. "You got to have something to hold on to."

On Test Pattern, the producer and group chieftain decided to immerse himself in computer wizardry to challenge the rootsy, organic sound Sonia Dada has laid down since forming in 1990.

"We used a lot of computers for samples and arrangements," Pritzker says. "We got a lot of people on stage, so we don't need a lot of machines to reproduce the sounds in concert."

The idea for the album's production style came from a high school art project Pritzker remembered. His class took a famous painting and re-created it using torn-up pieces of paper.

"We recorded songs and re-assembled with samples and rhythmic textures," he says. "It was a real painstaking way of doing things. We wanted to make a highly technical record."

It took two and a half years to complete, but the CD is far from a laborious listen. A little busy at times, yes. But the sonic journey is so rich that you wanna stick around and see how one song folds into the next. A remarkable thing about Test Pattern is that it maintains a nice flow as the styles mutate.

"Growing up, I always loved records where one song flowed into another," Pritzker says, "like the old Stevie Wonder albums like Innervisions and Fulfillingness' First Finale. But Test Pattern was a hard record to make, because it was so computer-oriented and I'm an analog guy. We wanted to meld both worlds, actually."

The mission was accomplished. The CD is so far one of the most interesting, evocative records I've heard all year. Which means pop radio won't touch this baby. Test Pattern has what real music lovers don't get enough of these days: exciting, eclectic musicianship and - thank goodness - songs with a pulse.

http://www.soniadada.com/...s/bsun.htm
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Sonia Dada
BY JOHN GODDARD

With the release of the CD/DVD valu-pak Test Pattern, Chicago's Sonia Dada again leaves us with more questions than answers. The disc's twelve tracks paint a compelling picture of Chi-town's cosmopolitan cityscape, with ambient and ethnic hues on a textured canvas of roots-rock and soul, but it's not a fixed image. Guitarist/founder Dan Pritzker gave us some insight into why the band likes the picture best when it's changing.

The Riverfront Times: The new album is a bit disorienting, but not at all in a bad way. I've listened to it five times or so and I'm still not really certain of what I'm hearing.

Dan Pritzker: We just came back from playing with this band that's fairly well known, and it was basically the same song one after the other. The keys changed and the tempo changed, but the overall hit you got from them -- they're reasonably competent players, but whatever tune they're doing seems to go through their personal cheese grater and get processed out the other side, all Velveeta'd out.

Whereas with Sonia Dada, it seems as if there's no telling where things will go. Your cheese grater is set to "random," I guess. I definitely hear a roots-and-soul core on the record, but you've filtered it through so many different perspectives.

The reason [our music] is what you say is [that] we tend to look at each individual song and approach it as its own thing, sort of remaking the band -- with the same people -- on a song-by-song basis. We're not necessarily married to any particular approach or instrumentation or anything like that. It's the same people playing the stuff, but the diversity of Sonia Dada's musicians allows that sort of thing. I've been doing this for twelve or thirteen years, and if it wasn't that way, I just couldn't do it.

What's been in heavy rotation in Dan Pritzker's stereo?

A lot of Billie Holiday and stuff like that. Old records. I don't really listen to much pop music. It's not that I don't like it, but I don't really know what's out there. The interesting thing I've found as I've started to travel around the country for the last several months and tune in to local stations is the extent to which everything is the same everywhere. It's a real shame.

-- John Goddard
http://www.soniadada.com/...ws/rft.htm
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This group is GOOD! 3 great lead vocalists and a tight animated band that works well together.
They don't act weird or dress funny (well, if you don't count the Summer of Love hippie look) and i'm guessing they're all rather "mature" which means they'll never make it big. But based on the fact that during the show female vocalist Shawn Christopher mentioned that she'd been in the group 7 years, their ability to tour locally & internationally must be keeping everyone happy.




...Take Back (video from their Test Pattern release featuring Lester Bowie)


Sonia Dada website: http://www.soniadada.com/index.html


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431
[Edited 4/29/07 0:38am]

Sweet. Video piece is nice too. Will have to check them out.

anon said:

I'm curious as to what their earliest albums sound like.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

something new for me to check out...thanks!....I have never heard of them....

theAudience said:

I'm still amazed that this type talent was discovered singing in the subway. It's nothing new, but every once in a while, things like this make you take the step back to really look at the sad state of music today.

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Kool, Nice sounds!! Thanks, tA!!




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