Concert Review: Rokia Traore

Concert Review: Rokia Traore

April 17, 2010, Highline Ballroom
Rokia Traore

Highline Ballroom, a place full of surprises
My happiness on finding out the Daniel Hope concert at the Highline Ballroom (previous post) was nothing compared to the near-ecstasy I felt when I browsed the Highline Ballroom website and found out Rokia Traore was giving a concert later in the week!!!!

Rokia Traore
I have to thank J.C. for getting to know this wonderful singer. We heard JC play tracks from her album Bomboi, and we were hooked. What a fine voice full of emotion, and we didn't even know what she was singing about! I now have several of her CDs and my audiophile friends in NYC took to her like we did too.

Although on her albums she was singing in a Mali dialect, Rokia Traore was well bred (see wikipedia entry) and apparently multilingual.

It is a MUST you visit her Official Website. It's in French, but right on the front page there is a Live Dec 2009 video (click ">Voir Le Video") of superior quality to the youtube I am embedding below. There's a lot more clips when you click on Videos.

The Concert
There were a lot fewer seats and no sit-down dining downstairs. About half the people, including myself, were standing and swinging to the music. The band appeared to be the same as in her official video, and they came out high. The grooves did not feel particularly African; after all, this is world music, though happily amongst the best in this admittedly uneven genre. Some of the numbers were familiar, and Traore paid tribute to Miriam Makeba, surely the icon of the female African singer. She sang mostly in her native tongue, but there were a few in French (likely her second language), delivered in style. One English song I did not enjoy too much; it's her weakest language. Her voice was a little hoarse; no doubt the tour (four months) has taked its toll.

Traore is a very stylish presence, a beautiful lady. Her gesticulations during the slower numbers were fluid, imbued with elements of the dance, and elegant.

The long African songs I am sure contained improvised elements, full of taunts and cries, sometimes a little like our own 山歌. These were mesmerizing in their powers, and the repetitions were ritual and hypnotic at once. A bit surprising, the blast and energy, since on her albums her numbers are not so frankly groovy. This is understandable for a concert, as the musicians need to work a crowd. The energy level steadily increased as the concert progressed, and for the last forty minutes Rokia Traore was dancing vehemently, her elegance increasingly yielding to the sensual, even erotic. And that was the greatest surprise of the evening - this lady is as much dancer as singer!

As is the case with many African singers, or American Black singers, Traore took some time to speak to the crowd on the misery of her people, the tragedy that is Africa, and the need to cling onto hope. Yes, she is a good speaker too. At the very end, several people popped in for a brief while and danced with her; one of them I suspect was Cesaria Evora. None of that prepared us for the finale, when the background vocal lady went into paroxysmal spasms of some high-jitter African dance moves, effectively ending the great concert.

I saw people taking videos during the performance. Sure enough, after a bit of searching I found some footage of the concert loaded on youtube. That was efficient! I embedded these for your pleasure, and hope you enjoy them as much as I did.