Kaleta & Super Yamba Band with Bondeko

The veteran Afrobeat guitarist of Fela Kuti’s Egypt 80 returns to SPACE with his show-stopping Super Yamba Band. Don’t wait on tickets — Kaleta’s last three Portland shows have sold out! 

Brooklyn’s Kaleta & Super Yamba Band are fronted by Afrobeat and Juju veteran Leon Ligan-Majek a.k.a. Kaleta. The singer/guitarist from the West African country of Benin Republic lived his adolescent life in Lagos, Nigeria where Afrobeat was born. Kaleta’s guitar chops earned him decades of touring and recording with Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade, Lauryn Hill and more. Kaleta got his start in the late ’70s performing in church and was soon after picked up by iconic Juju master and world music pioneer King Sunny Ade. A few years later Fela Kuti came calling. Kaleta would go on to tour the world playing guitar for the King of Afrobeat in his storied band Egypt 80 through the 1980s and into the 1990s.

Now based in New York City, Kaleta has been leading Super Yamba Band since 2017. Their debut album Mèdaho draws on the group’s shared reverence for the raw, psychedelic sounds that captivated Kaleta as a kid in 1970s Benin. Mèdaho means “big brother”, “elder” or “teacher” and is dedicated to Kaleta’s late brother Ligan-Ozavino Pascal who introduced him to funk and soul music at a very early age. The album was included on Bandcamp’s “Best Albums of Summer 2019” list and two of the songs were chosen for the ABC/Hulu series High Fidelity staring Zoe Kravitz.

Kaleta and his band have also erupted onto the stages and video screens of major music festivals and music publications across the US. They performed at the historic Apollo Theatre in 2019. They even prompted Action Bronson to stop his own show on VICELAND TV just so he could hear more Yamba. They also performed on Adult Swim’s Fishcenter Live show in 2019. They made their Maine debut at SPACE in summer 2019 and have since played three sold-out shows in Portland.

Bondeko is the unlikely collaboration of neighbors in Portland, Maine’s migrant community: an Albanian crooner, a Guinian drummer, a French singer-songwriter, a Latin musician from Texas…

The result is a mix of hypnotic Roma melodies, festive Cumbia rhythms, Malenke sing-alongs, relentless Balkan tempos, peppered with heart warming waltzes and maybe even a lullaby in Portunhol if the vibe is right.

Each perfomance is a celebration of the joy of working accross cultures with bandmates you may not even share a language in common with. And the night is never complete without some audience participation!

Bondeko is proudly from Portland, Maine, proudly international and proudly multigenerational.