Arkansas Sounds presents the Velvet Kente Arkestra, an expanded version of the band Velvet Kente, on Friday, January 9, at 7:30 p.m. in the CALS Ron Robinson Theater, 100 River Market Ave. Theater doors open at 6:30 p.m.

General admission tickets are $10, and are available online and at the Butler Center Galleries, 401 Pres. Clinton Ave., Mon.-Sat. 9am-6pm. Tickets purchased online will not be mailed; they may be picked up in the theater’s lobby one hour before the show.

Velvet Kente Arkestra is a genre-dodging collective seeking to consistently make an aural connection with all that will listen with an open mind. Their most obvious influences include Afro-Caribbean music, indie rock, punk, blues mythos, and gospel. But otherwise there’s no transparent consistency in the sound outside of Joshua’s heart-wrenched vocals, which lie somewhere between a coarse scream and a sweat-stained Pentecostal baritone.
Natalie Elliot, Oxford American