Nigerian singer-songwriter Asa played at le Poisson Rouge in Manhattan on Friday night as part of the New Africa Live series, sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts. Raised in Lagos, Asa now lives in Paris, where she was born, and you can hear the African rhythms in her music and the expatriate fire in her voice. BLK JKS, a South African band whose music defies genre, opened for Asa and set the tone for a night of reggae-inflected songs that carry weight beyond the walls of a Manhattan club.
If you weren’t here you missed out.