A French funk band was playing when I walked in. The room was packed from the back wall to the door on the left side of the stage I walked in through. It was hot and sticky – the humidity hit me like a bucket of hot water propped on top of the door, soaking me as I entered. I spotted my friends at the front of the mass, right at the foot of the stage, but there was no way I was pushing through to get to them, so I waited and watched the fog play with the lighting around the band. The band wasn’t bad actually, the drummer was particularly solid.
The band finished and the crowd dispersed to the corners of the bar to rehydrate with over-priced watered-down beer. Some went outside for a cigarette break, and some just left. The group of friends I was meeting diminished considerably. It was a Tuesday night, and we had classes the next morning, so most went home. They came to the show to see Ben Lee anyways, a singer/songwriter from the States who played earlier that evening. I didn’t really know why I came when the show was half over…
We stood in the middle of the bar waiting for the next band to start. A strange looking couple took advantage of the open space and started dancing. We had to dodge their feet a few times; they got pretty into their own moves, flinging themselves in the most awkward manners from one side of the room to the other. The girl lost her balance once and flew into Sarah, almost table-topping her. They looked like they were really good imitators of people who actually knew how to dance, but they just weren’t at that level themselves. If the next band wasn’t good, this dance show redeemed the 5 Euros I paid to get into the bar at least.
Just when the tiny dancers had enough, the curtains opened. The lights turned off and a lone figure stood in the center of the stage, one light from behind showed only a silhouette. A loop of voices started playing, harmonizing with each other – I thought it was Bjork secretly touring on her acapella album Medulla for a second and got really excited. Then I realized whoever this was with this amazing voice had an afro and leather pants, so it couldn’t have been Bjork. Lights came on from the sides of the stage and a voice belted out words onto the crowd like I’ve never heard before. Three or four people with intense cameras jumped to the front of the stage and started shooting while everyone else in the bar dropped their jaws and did a half-smile-type movement with their mouths. It wasn’t Bjork, but she got the same reaction Bjork does for the most part.
Three songs in and the entire crowd was still a mass of statues, our eyes unable to move from her energy above us. She sang in French and English, but words didn’t matter much with the quality of sound she was producing. Such soul! Such energy! Such passion! Such ingenuity! She had no instrument but her voice for us at first, her Boss RC-50 loop pedal let her toy with self-created beats and harmonies right in front of us. Halfway through her set she was joined by the drummer of the funk band that played earlier, a bassist, and a keyboardist. They all harmonized with her, accentuating her melodies and complementing her better than TV does to Sunday afternoons.
The closing of the metro pulled us out of the venue unwillingly – we had to leave before the end of her set. Walking to the underground tunnels, all we talked about was how ridiculous her voice was, and how soulful she sang.
A few days later, putting together notes to write this little blog entry, I realized I needed one bit of information that I didn’t catch while I was at the concert. I went on the venue’s website to search for it, but it was already gone. No one in the group I was with caught the singing silhouette’s name.
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