Milwaukee Journal Sentinal: "World music with bells and brass knobs on"
by Jon M. Gilbertson
July 15, 2008
The liner notes of "Legends of the Preacher" make it terrifically clear that Nation Beat is world music with bells and brass knobs on: percussion instruments like the pandeiro (a kind of tunable Brazilian tambourine) and the surdo (a Brazilian bass drum) have places alongside the more usual drum kit.
Nation Beat founder Scott Kettner seeks, with this album, to intertwine the various styles of the American South with those of what might be called the South American Northeast. The results are not unlike a block party in which the block's residents forge, with body heat, their own melting pot.
In the whirl, "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" becomes country music from quite another country, while "Maré Cheia" straddles the borders of the blues even as the members of the Klezmatics make the Hebrew connection. Nation Beat assimilates all these styles without forcing the styles to assimilate.