Kannal

Kan'Nal's self-proclaimed "tribal shamanic rock" purges the soul with a musical plunger coursing through the Earth and flushing me clean from my feet, bare and rooted, emptying more layers than I knew I had. In a primal mixture of music and dance, their rhythmic fire transforms the space. I've seen the Ashland Armory in daylight and know it's not thick below the waist like a bog, yet I float in something tangible, holding me as I carve rivulets, hollowing a musical canoe with my hips. Teresita Hinojosa and Akayate, performance artists, move like human puppets with someone else's body dancing below pagan clown faces to the building heartbeat of Aaron Jerad's didgeridoo. Joyful, enticing serpentine magic, merely from wearing a curious white mask backwards — the music takes us back to the basics: simple, raw, power.


Tierro's masterful Spanish gypsy rampage on the guitar plucks my ribs as if harp strings ran between them. He faces Tzol at the front of the stage, squaring off, dueling his guitar against Tzol's hard and euphonic voice. Tzol's powerful lyrics echo and roar, pounding into a whirlwind of desperate, fiery, abysmal banter. Ancient conversations, spawned from the heart, explode in heavy metal desperation. Tierro's guitar talks back, unafraid of flames, speaking this language of heat.

Teresita duels with a guest musician in voices alone. Swirling sounds and words into the room, like racquetballs flying against the walls, the guest imitates a DJ while Teresita releases Earth-Mother lyrics in spoken-word rap.

Aaron on percussion and didgeridoo creates a spacey electric backdrop with his spit and breath. Gilly Gonzales adds shakers (often rattling the whole post of chimes) and other toys to the surreal mix, creating a high-tech sound without the tech. The music thickens with Tierro's loops and Rodolfo Escobar holding it together with bass. Rodolfo quietly draws the high-energy rhythms into the Earth where they seep and pulse into quakes. Rich sounds ripple through my feet to my spine in walrus echoes, discussing things older than my terrestrial roots comprehend.

Gilly's bare hands work the drum set to dough, bouncing off hard rims as easily as the soft skins of the hand drums surrounding him. He's a child playing a bath into a tidal wave as he breaks into a solo. Akayate shares the spotlight, spinning white sheets in front of a projector streaming images onto stage.

My legs brace themselves wide, rooting strongly as if on a train with no handholds. My arms fly, shedding emotional crud I've gathered like spider webs on my hiking boots. Cleansing. Pulsing. Breathing limbs lift the air around me. Swirling swords like poi and clanging them overhead in time with the music, Teresita cuts loose anything not yet shaken free. Held still, the swords fill the room with strong vibrations and a settling grace.

The rest of the band takes a seat, playing at the back of the stage, while Tzol plays his rhythm guitar and sings a sweet political religious song. Like the band, I too drift to a softer place, searching for rest, trying to catch my breath. Got it! Just in time, the whole band returns to pulse the growing volcano fire into musical form.


Teresita glides back and forth like a tiger taunting the microphone at the front of the stage, testing its scent before accepting it as her chosen outlet. Tierro smiles at this hunt. As her spoken-word builds, she lifts her arms, revealing wings of golden cloth far larger than herself. She spins in smooth circles, and a gleaming sun materializes at the edge of the stage.

Waves of intense instrumental explosions rip me at the seams and strip away layers until nothing's left. I didn't need it anyway. The music burns me down, and I'm left dancing among sparks over the crowd above my body rooted to the vibrations below my feet, cemented into a musical vortex, wondering how I'm going to get home, having abandoned the non-essential flesh and bones of my being. No time to think about it now. Turns out the brain wasn't as important as I'd counted, and all that remains is new territory. That and hard-pounding music painting a horizon where the ocean devours the sun in flame to paint the sky in their collaborated explosion. I am joy. I am music. I am throwing handfuls of water on a blazing inferno just to keep it fighting, burning the world to ash where it can grow anew from seeds of this raw musical fire.

JamBase | Ashland - JamBase

It's a rare CD that makes you want to rub sticks together in your back yard, yank off your clothing and howl at the moon while cavorting around a crackling bonfire. Kan'Nal's "Dreamwalker" has that effect.

Started in Guatemala by Tzol, a transplanted vocalist-guitarist from Austin, and lead guitarist Tierro, a Canadian wanderer, this "shamanic rock" group has evolved into a seven-member performance-art beast based in Boulder, Colo.

Kan'Nal's concerts are spectacular: Hypnotic percussion, skull-crushing guitar and buzzing didgeridoo create a spirit-channeling framework for Tzol's primal screams and sensual, son-of-Tarzan vocals. Kan'Nal's two female members -- mesmerizing hippie-chick dancers -- gyrate as if possessed, eyes rolled back, sometimes holding deer antlers to their craniums.

Capturing that madness on disc would seem improbable, but Kan'Nal comes close. "Dreamwalker" is knifed into two visceral halves: six excellent studio tracks (one that's part live) and three longer, sweat-drenched live cuts. The mystical, metallic "Desert Flower" is the heaviest journey, musically and lyrically. While acoustic and electric jungle-trance guitars brew up a storm, Tzol exults: "Shake my bones 'til they shatter! Shake my soul like a rattle!"

If there's a possible criticism, it's that if you've heard one Kan'Nal song, you've sort of heard them all. Not fair. Gorgeous ballads such as "Time" and "All Things Change" showcase a softer dimension of Kan'Nal's sonic palette of earth, wind and fire. But even if you were to accept that gripe . . . MAN, WHAT A SONG.

Tribal-rock blasts such as "Gypsy" and "Iris" plunge a hand into your chest and grab onto the part of your being that swung from trees a few million years ago. Find another band that does that.

-- Michael Deeds - Washington Post

By Dave Terpeny

My craving for some new and inventive world beat music was intense as I arrived at the office this morning and immediately headed over to the CD inbox. My eye was instantly drawn to Kan’Nal’s Dreamwalker album. Call it fate if you will, but spirit knew better than I did.

The disc started spinning and the room exploded into colors. ‘This is way beyond world beat,’ I thought as I watched the swirling energies coalesce around me. ‘But what is it?’

It is the journey of spiritual travelers, drawn together by a series of “coincidental” encounters upon the La Ruta Maya, or spiritual tour through the Mayan sites of Mexico, Belize, Honduras and Guatemala. But it began in truth in the Guatemalan village San Marcos (near the sacred Lake Atitlan) with the meeting of Tzol, whose pseudonym paraphrases the name of the sacred Mayan calendar, (vocals/guitar) and Tierro (ld guitar).

There they begun to experiment with rhythm and melodies, writing songs that were to eventually find themselves recorded thousands of miles away in Toronto as their self-titled debut album (2001, independent). But first, the songs had to take shape.

“We played mainly in courtyards behind people’s homes,” Tzol remembered, “which we’d decorate before each show with flowers that we’d picked and anything else we could find to create these extravagant displays.”

Shortly after recording in Toronto they returned to Guatemala and immediately met Rodolfo Escobar (bass) and his partner Teresita (performance artist). Again, spirit intervened and the two became an integral part of Kan’Nal, integrating a stronger and funkier vibe and a nuanced sense of depth to their performance.

And there they stayed, living just outside San Marcos in a certain utopian state of grace; living off the land, performing, exploring and stretching their souls in the tropical heat.

Teresita recalled that “we could spend all day lying in the sun, swimming, and eating fresh fruit that’s just falling from the trees. At the same time there’s no running water or electricity,” she continued, “so you have to make a fire every time you want to cook. You pull the beans from the ground to make your salads. It takes all day to prepare your meal. To get anywhere you have to follow paths through huge mountains, so your body is challenged but it also comes to life and becomes strong.”

This natural and spiritual way of life is reflected strongly in their lyrics just as their mystic sense of geography is heard in their music. Latin rhythms are a strong influence, African and Gypsy percussion echo through each song and meditative vibes abound, all anchored by a surprisingly strong sense of western rock and roll that weaves itself in and out of the myriad of cultural and folk roots with surprising agility.
Lyrically, they are at times mind-bending, sometimes obvious and always, it seems, exploratory:

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Unite the colours and walk as one - “Gypsy”
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I’ll walk a thousand miles at least to slay myself and offer up my soul like a rattle – “Desert Flower”
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Plant the seeds in the mother’s core and grow like corn - “Sun and Moon”

Tzol explains. “It’s never about just standing onstage. We want to go beyond that, to stimulate all the senses and raise them to some other level.”

And as Kan’Nal sat around their utopian lake, fate insisted on raising them to new levels as well. There they met Aaron Jerad (didgeridoo/percussion) and Gilly Gonzalez (percussion) who again layered more texture onto the rapidly evolving Kan’Nal sound.

From there, Teresita brought storyteller Akayate into the fold and then they stepped firmly into the 21st century with the addition of Multimedia Videographer Boris Karpman.

Then what? Well they relocated from Guatemala to Mexico. And, being the travelers that they so obviously are, they relocated again to Texas and finally to Boulder, Colorado, recording an EP in 2004 and then finally the full-length album Dreamweaver (due out September 20th on Physiks Records) that brought us to this article in the first place.

And now that I’ve listened to it at length, watched the videos on their website and explored their online community, I’ve come full circle to a profound respect for Kan’Nal and what they are trying (successfully in my mind) to accomplish.

Tzol describes their music as “shamanic rock” and I couldn’t agree more. This is music that not only has a conscience but is conscious. It seeks, it challenges and it heals with an incredible blend of international rhythms, mystical memories and a perfectly placed rock attitude. So now that they’ve played High Sierra, Burning Man and Dreamtime, traveled across several continents and through multiple countries and are preparing for the release of their first full-length album, what’s next?

"I see us going even further," Tzol insisted, "to Europe, Australia, and Asia – anywhere and everywhere -- because we're all travelers at heart. And to be able to do this as part of a project like Kan'Nal is a great privilege. I really believe we are just at the beginning." - KyndMusic