Austin's Trouble in the Streets creates dance music that will make you cry
The celestial groove theory of electronic trio Trouble in the Streets defies definition. With driving rhythms, the music incorporates “the danceability of EDM,” Ableton maestro Andy Leonard says. But it’s not just party music. Vocalist Nnedi “Nebula” Agbaroji channels the ache of the ages as she infuses the band’s uptempo jams with the deep soul of early R&B and rock & roll. One moment, she sets hopes soaring. A few songs later, she breaks you to the core. People cry at their shows.
“I think it's a catharsis more than it is anything else,” Agbaroji says.
The shows are a journey, and “we take people on some dark turns,” Leonard says.
Agbaroji says she allows her own emotions to get swept up in a way that creates “space for people to have that vulnerability to process whatever thing they're going through.”
“And I think that's what music and art should be,” she says.
Dive into your feelings and dance away the sorrow as the band celebrates the release of their debut full-length album, “Satisfy Saturn,” at the next installment of The Drop at 6 p.m. on April 14 at Waterloo Records.
The Drop is our live music series, co-produced by KUTX 98.9 FM. Each month, we highlight an artist from the diverse communities that keep the Music Capital of the World live. The shows are all-ages, free and open to the public.
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Survival anthems for trying times
The collaboration between Leonard and Agbaroji began in 2014. A series of festival jams in a converted school bus inspired Agbaroji, an in-demand backup vocalist around town, to share her original material. She was hoping Leonard and his studio bus partner, drummer Bobby Snakes, would help her make a demo. Instead, they wanted to form a band. The trio released two EPs, but then the coronavirus pandemic broke their momentum. (Snakes left town; eventually, Kenny Schwartz replaced him on drums.)
“Satisfy Saturn” swims in some of the same musical waters as Leonard and Agbaroji’s other band, cosmic jazz and funk outfit Golden Dawn Arkestra, but it plunges the listener far deeper into the emotional wake.
“Can I, can I breathe/ Brace for the fall/ Can’t take it back/ When you don’t wanna let go/ Where you don’t hurt no one,” Agbaroji sings on album opener, “Can I Breathe.”
In the life of the album, it’s the opening breath. The song invokes incidents of police brutality in a way that is not accidental, but it also holds deeper meaning. It’s about “wanting to take on this life, but then having these things, these entities, these people, these power systems, suppress that and then hold you, pull you back,” Agbaroji says.
A survival anthem, the song centers the struggle to find connections and resist desensitization despite the social structures that are “creating this divisiveness that makes it hard for us to even help each other, let alone come up for air,” she says.
“Even what's going on with SB 12,” she says. Texas Senate Bill 12 would restrict drag performances where minors are present. LGBTQ advocates argue the joyous representation of queer culture in drag can benefit queer youths. The bill passed the Senate on Wednesday, and it is headed to the House. Agbaroji continues, “I'm queer. Most of my friends are queer, and it's just kind of this crazy thing that you don't realize is such a blatant disregard of human rights.”
The album clocks in at close to an hour. Along the way, there are moments of levity and party tracks as it traces a life from birth to death. The band’s latest single, “Mother’s Tongue,” is a gorgeous ode to resilience that taps into Agbaroji’s Nigerian heritage.
“It's a love song to the African diaspora, but it's also a love song to the world, because I want us to know that we all belong to each other,” she says.
The video, directed by Leonard and featuring Austin dancer Sade Jones, draws on the traditions of Igbo masquerade. “I kind of did a gender-bending, nonbinary vibe where I was encapsulating the maiden but also encapsulating the chief,” she says.
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'Can you see the other side?'
As the album nears its denouement, Agbaroji shakes off the mortal coil with profound power.
Title track “Satisfy Saturn” is an eight-and-a-half minute elegy for a 7-year-old who died in a senseless act of gun violence in Agbaroji’s hometown, Houston. The little girl and her mother were both shot and loaded into separate ambulances. “She died on the way to the hospital. So, her mom didn't get that chance to be with her,” Agbaroji says.
She had been watching the case unfold, and on the day of the child’s funeral, the lyrics flowed. Using the metaphor of a mother and daughter in a crashing plane, she sings to the child as she transitions from life to death:
“Didn’t I didn’t I didn’t I always hold your hand/ Didn’t I didn’t I didn’t I teach you how to pray/ Can you see the other side/ Do you even know what it’s supposed to look like/ Now what my arms cannot do/ I trust to the waves."
Pushing through sorrow, she lights a path into the deep unknown.
The song challenged the band to dig deep. They wanted to highlight a devastating social issue without being antagonistic. The end result is a masterwork that will leave you shattered.
“I don't know how to fix gun violence," Agbaroji says.
"All I can do is reiterate the story and (hope) it makes somebody feel something.”
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: See Trouble in the Streets for The Drop at Waterloo Records in Austin
