All the cool kids are in Albuquerque this weekend enjoying the annual Globalquerque! festival, which I’ve had the pleasure of attending three times now. Although I couldn’t make it down this year, I figured I could still get a taste of the event by attending a concert by Oreka Tx (performing Saturday night in the Journal Theater). The free show was held at the Basque Center in South San Francisco. I must admit that I don’t know a lot about the Basques, except that you never seem to hear the word “Basque” in the news unless it’s immediately followed by “separatist.”

The men of Oreka Tx are peace-loving musicians who went on a mission of musical goodwill around the world a few years ago. They collaborated with nomadic musicians from several other countries, including India, Morocco, Mongolia and the Sami country of northern Scandinavia. The quartet now performs their Nomadak Tx show in front of a movie screen, allowing them to “play along” with the musicians they met during their travels, from throat singers to sitar players. The “Tx” in the band name is a little confusing, because most Americans assume that it stands for “Texas.” It is actually short for the txalaparta, a traditional Basque instrument that looks a little like a vibraphone. Two people play the txalaparta, banging down on wood planks with thick wooden sticks held vertically. It was reportedly used as a way of communication among Basque tribes in more primitive times, but the art of playing the txalaparta was on the verge of dying out altogether in the 1960s, when there were only two pairs of brothers left who could play the thing. Luckily, Oreka Tx have — well, I hesitate to say popularized it, but they’ve at least brought it to the attention of world music fans.

Having attended quite a few world music concerts and events, it seems like the musicians who make it all the way to the U.S. from faraway lands tend to be the ones who can put on a very entertaining show. It takes a concerted effort to make it over here from Mali or Mongolia, and you have to have a few world music promoters in the U.S. who really like you. My friend Neal caught Oreka Tx during a showcase last year and was blown away, and resolved to bring them to New Mexico for Globalquerque! His praise was enough to get me to attend the group’s local concert, and I’m glad I did. I suspect they will win over the audience in Albuquerque as they certainly did here. The two txalaparta players were amazing — their sticks were moving so fast that at times they appeared to be flying, and it made me wonder how often musicians get a black eye when one of the other guy’s sticks accidentally gets a little too close to your face.

The multimedia component of the show was compelling, though I wished they had included some titles letting you know exactly where they were; I mean, India’s a big country. My favorite part of the film was when they traveled to the snow-covered Sami country (Jukkajarvi, Sweden, according to this article) and built a txalaparta out of ice, using a chain saw to cut blocks which they hit with sticks made of ice. They even made a few other percussion instruments, including a set of ice chimes! In the North African desert, they created their instrument from flat rocks.

The concert’s final number was sort of a “remix” featuring bits and pieces of music by each of the indigenous performers Oreka Tx encountered along their trip. What could have been a crazy hodgepodge of sounds was somehow in perfect harmony.

And now, a digression. One of the reasons I have gotten pretty good at recognizing foreign locales is because I have watched all 16 seasons of “The Amazing Race” (tune in tomorrow for Season 17!). If I had kids, I would make them watch “TAR” and build my own curriculum around it. They would follow the contestants’ journeys on a map, and learn about each country they visit. It would combine the educational component of learning about customs, languages and geography with the down & dirty fun of watching somebody get hit in the head with a watermelon.