This blog is about music.
Last night, we saw a show at one of the world’s most famous theatres. The Apollo on 125th street in Harlem heaves with history and the energy of some of the greatest performers of all time. It’s the place where Ella Fitzgerald made her debut in 1934, and where James Brown’s body lay in 2006. I got a few chills just stepping into the place. “Amateur Night at the Apollo” is something you just have to see in New York. Every Wednesday night some very talented and not so talented people dance, sing, rap, tell jokes, or play music to an audience which won’t hesitate to boo them off the stage. Beware the executioner.
The audience in fact is worth the price of admission alone. There are people who KNOW music – who git up and git down, swing their hips, sway their arms and holla. When the MC says “Put your hands togetha!” they do and they look great doing it. And then there are the rest. Lots of tourists, lots of, well let’s be honest, white people. Some who so want to roll with it. Some who are terrified that they’ll be pulled up on stage and asked to dance. And some who think they’ve got “it”, but they just don’t. And the beauty is, it doesn’t matter who you are, how comfortable you are, where you’re from or what colour you are, the Apollo has a way of making everyone in the audience feel good.
Last night there were a couple of great performances. A woman who calls herself Kande sang that old Dolly Parton favourite “I Will Always Love You.” This one can be a real eye-roller because it’s just so overdone. But Kande worked it – when she hit the big notes in the chorus my scalp tingled. Spirituals can also do that, and a young man called Christopher had the audience in tears using the incredible range of his tremourous voice.
I won’t mention the people who got booed off the stage. That’s a tough Apollo tradition.
Over the last six months we’ve had many astounding musical moments. I want to name a few more.
The Dawson City Music Festival. I’ve talked about this before. If you can go, go. Dawson is a six-hour drive north-west of Whitehorse, which in itself is a 24-hour drive north of Edmonton or Vancouver. Because it’s held in the peak of summer, there is magical twilight even at 2 am. Dawson is a special place, replete with the history of the gold rush and humankind’s quest for wealth at all costs. The town is small so you’re likely to see the musicians in the same bar or cafe, or walking the streets. For those days everyone is part of the Dawson community. The people we especially loved there were:
Justin Rutledge: This Toronto-based singer/songwriter has the truest voice I have ever heard, even at 10 Saturday morning, in a session called “Hangover Songs.” Some of the performers in that session may still even have been drunk. Justin warned us he was feeling a little bit groggy. But he strummed the first quiet chords, and when he opened his mouth I swear angels flew out. His session in a church later that day was equally good. He can even make a singalong, with the lines “Don’t be so mean, my jellybean,” feel like a Canadian gospel revival. Blow November blow.
Basia Bulat: When she speaks she sounds like a younger girl. She is sweet and bright, generous in her introductions of fellow musicians and just a bit shy. And then she starts to play. Her hands cascade again and again on the autoharp, her head tilts, and she comes forth with an all embracing rich voice, and massive presence. Her band, bespeckled and underwhelming in fashion and in hairdos, keep lively time with fiddles and drums, perfect harmonies and joyful handclaps. Basia plays the guitar too. And the piano. Her songs are like scampering, sunny summer days.
Martha Wainwright: Not just Martha Wainwright which is a treat in itself, but Martha Wainwright sings Edith Piaf, here at the Spiegeltent in New York City. The venue is so small, you could almost accidentally spill your drink on her fabulous dress. Martha’s brother Rufus has performed his now famous “Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall” show a few times, and I was lucky enough to be at one of them (honeymoon in Paris, you know). During that magnificent show Rufus talked about practicing Garland songs in front of his bedroom mirror when he was a boy. Well if Rufus was born to be Judy, Martha was both to be Edith.
With fist clenched, her eyes closed, and her foot keeping violently contained time, Martha sang Piaf as well as Piaf ever sang Piaf. The little sparrow must have been on her shoulder. Her voice, on the brink of never faltering, brought us into a murky Paris club. Even when she deadpanned her way through the “Hello Boys, you come with me?…” part of C’est a Hambourg (“uh, I don’t speak German”), she had the audience hovering, waiting for the next breath, the next word. And when she sang “Les Blouses Blanches,” she put each of us into that poor woman’s head, falling surely into a terrified madness.
With Martha, you almost always get the added huge bonus of Kate and Anna and Rufus. I love this family. Martha, her aunt and mother sang a melancholy and moving folk song. And though not as memorable, the siblings sang a Josephine Baker song, Rufus at the piano with his back to the audience, according Martha her spotlight. (I do wish she and Rufus had sung “Les Amants” – the song Piaf and Charles Dumont sang together. But then I would have been a blubbering mess, because I’m such a sucker for that stuff.)
Finally, when Martha nailed one of her encores, the rapidfire “Le Metro de Paris”, her mother beamed at her from the sidelines, looking incredibly proud. Her daughter was singing so very well.
Martha said she may be recording an album of Edith songs. When she does buy it. And in the meantime if you get a chance to see her perform, go.
There are some fabulous photos of the show, including the one of the set list I used in the masthead in this blog.
Is it a coincidence that except for the Apollo the performers I mentioned here are Canadian? No. We just have magnificent talent.
What do you get when you mix a 70s Canadian iconic folk duo, their extended family, the Godfather of Punk, an avant-garde performance artist, a drag queen, a country/folk legend, with Judy Garland and Edith Piaf impressionists ?