Arrested Development: Bimbo's, San Francisco

AT ARRESTED Development concerts, its not enough to wave your hands around; "put your souls up" is the cry. Three songs in, Speech stopped everything and brought white-haired Baba Oje forward. It was time to "pour libation" for the ancestors. And no one snickered. How could we, when we'd just felt mesmerized by the new songs 'Africa's Inside Me' and 'Kneelin' at my Altar'? The live renditions of these songs actually improved on the studio versions, something incredibly rare for rap concerts. And the eight women and men singing, rapping, and dancing around onstage in a whirl of different directions gave symbolic credibility to AD's fantasy of a Utopian Afrocentric village.