Tonight's Top Stop: Bambu Station at Strathmore

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BAMBU STATION'S ROOTS are in the Virgin Islands, and its music's heart is from Jamaica, but bandleader Jalani Horton is a longtime D.C. resident. Horton's group is now in its 10th year of making roots reggae with a social conscious, strongly influenced by Steel Pulse and the Wailers.

Bambu Station's new CD is "Break the Soil," and Horton and Co. made their own breakthroughs recently. In 2005, Horton left his family-mediation job at the D.C. Superior Court to perform music full time, as well as help run the Mt. Nebo Records label. And his band — drummer Andy Llanos and guitarist Tuff Lion, both from St. Croix, along with multi-instrumentalist Warren Pederson and keyboardist Cat Mitchell — is the first reggae group to participate in Strathmore's Artist in Residence program.

Bambu Station concludes its residency with a concert tonight featuring a commissioned song, "Good Morning (How Are the Children?)," based on a Tanzanian tradition that concludes if the children are well, then the community will prosper. Express spoke with Horton.

» EXPRESS: When did you start Bambu Station?
» HORTON: I was writing poetry, and a friend of mine invited me to his home studio in 1995, and that evolved into me writing songs, not just poems, and in 1996 I started the Bambu Station band. Through the years I've worked with several different musicians; the current lineup has been together the last five or six years, so we have some good stability right now.

» EXPRESS: Were you in the Virgin Islands when you started the band?
» HORTON: I was recently graduated from Howard University.

» EXPRESS: But you had never played or sang in bands before that?
» HORTON: Never did.

» EXPRESS: Writing is one thing, but how did you discover that you had a voice to sing?
» HORTON: I discovered it when I went into the studio. I read poetry, and then my friend played some music to see what I could do. I started improvising and free-styling, and so it naturally just came out. At first there were a lot of remnants in my sound of the singers I admired growing up. David Hinds, the singer from Steel Pulse. He influenced me quite a bit; I was interested in the songs he wrote, and the way he phrased, and the things he had to say. And the tone of his voice was great, too. Bob Marley, and the band Third World. But not just Bob Marley; it's better to say the Wailers because each of those characters, Bunny [Wailer] and Peter Tosh, inspired me. Those are the big ones in my life, and a lot of what I was singing at that time had an influence on my tone.

» EXPRESS: You grew up in the Virgin Islands?
» HORTON: Yes, St. Thomas.

» EXPRESS: And you moved to D.C. for college?
» HORTON: I moved to D.C. in 1988 for college. Political science.

» EXPRESS: Did you work in the political field at all?
» HORTON: When I left college I went directly to the D.C. Superior Court, and I worked in the domestic relations field for some time. For 13 years I did family mediation. But I left the court in 2005 to do music full time.

» EXPRESS: What's it like to be in a roots-reggae band based in D.C. as opposed to New York or Miami or the Caribbean?
» HORTON: It's very difficult because there's not really an industry here to support roots music. We don't really consider ourselves Washington-based; we're here, but we're on the road so much. But staying in the area really allows us to cut costs when it comes to touring. You don't have to try to get from the Virgin Islands to go on tour; you're already in the States, and you just go. Like, after the Strathmore show, we're going to take a break until late January. Some guys are going home to the islands; I'm going somewhere else. Then right before we go on tour in January, we'll get together for rehearsals and then we'll go on the road for three weeks.

» EXPRESS: Have you ever played in Jamaica?
» HORTON: No.

» EXPRESS: I've heard roots bands that aren't from Jamaica can get a rough reception there.
» HORTON: I hadn't heard that. But island audiences are tough — period. Even back in our homeland, it's tough. The younger generation and the commercial industry push the dancehall, they push the rap, so we don't get the marketability, so it's tough all around. But don't worry about the audiences, whether it's Jamaica or any place. We just do what we do because what we do is not for entertainment purposes; it's a mission, and we feel blessed to be in a position to do it. We hope that people are positive enough to receive what we have to say.

» EXPRESS: It seems like the Virgin Islands has a nice little roots scene going. A couple of really good artists have come through D.C. recently — Batch and Ras Attitude — and it seems like a grass-roots thing, they run their own labels.
» HORTON: Yeah, yeah, correct.

» EXPRESS: I know there are Rasta influences in your music, but it doesn't feel overtly Rasta in terms of the lyrics.
» HORTON: That's because I'm not Rasta. Growing up in the Caribbean, we're all of a particular culture, and we have our dialects. So what I try to bring to the songs I write is the Virgin Islands experience. So you hear terms that are specific to the V.I. form of expression. But there is the Rasta influence, because Rasta has greatly influenced my life. I've been asked, "What are you? Are you Rasta? Are you Muslim?" It feels nice to say, "I'm just a man of African descent trying to live in a Godly way." And hopefully that comes through in the music; just trying to knock down the barriers of labels.

» EXPRESS: Speaking of labels, where does Bambu Station's name come from?
» HORTON: Bambu is a childhood name — it was given to me as an infant. Station refers to the entities that broadcast. It's more symbolic; it's not Jalani Station. That was my name as an infant; I didn't grow up using it, but if we're going to play roots music, maybe it's symbolic to go back to my roots.

» EXPRESS: You're in Strathmore's Artist in Residence program. Tell me what that entails.
» HORTON: Putting on an educational workshop — you educate an audience about some aspect of your music. Then you attend certain clinics that they provide to help you build your infrastructure as an artist and to understand the business aspects and things of that nature. It also involves live performances that you're responsible for putting on at the Strathmore Mansion. They've commissioned us to write a song that will be debuted at [tonight's] performance ["Good Morning (How Are the Children?)].

» EXPRESS: Was the workshop for children?
» HORTON: This workshop that we just did was an adult workshop, but we've also prepared some material to present to different age groups, such as kids of primary-school age. Because the scope of reggae is very limited in the public's perception, one of our aims is to educate people about how diverse the music of reggae really is, and how it lends itself to supporting a healthy lifestyle. It gives so much information regarding holistic living, natural living — the more spiritual side of things, meditation, finding the groove within yourself.

» EXPRESS: You've been in the business for a while; was there anything in particular that the Strathmore program taught you that you didn't already know?
» HORTON: Well, the workshop was a very new experience. Never before were we approached to present the music that we do in a nonperforming way. That in itself was very challenging, to be able to break down the music and explain it to others. Also, another thing, to be able to speak to accomplished musicians — while they may be in a different genre, a musician is a musician. And there are certain things that are universal. And having the opportunity to speak to other musicians, to sit with them — for instance, the program assigns us a mentor, and we're able to sit with that mentor for a period of time and address any topic we're interested in. Our particular mentor is a musician, but he's also the head sound engineer [Caldwell Gray] at Strathmore. We're musicians, but we're also producers, so engineering, live sound, recorded sound — it's all very helpful.

» Mansion at Strathmore, 10701 Rockville Pike, Bethesda; 7:30 p.m.,$10; 301-581-5100. (Grosvenor-Strathmore)

Photo by Veronika Lukasova