KVT – Oh La La Gallo

KVT gets back into a West African Groove

Just can’t get enough of West African singers. A couple of weeks ago it was Kareyce Fotso stunning us at L’Espace with her acoustic guitar and THAT voice. On Thursday night it was Manou Gallo from the Ivory Coast with her bass electric guitar at the Youth Theater.

Born in 1972 Gallo has had an interesting musical career and does what they seem to call World Hot Music – a combination of soul, funk and blues with groove as a common denominator.
It seems that Gallo often performs with her Woman Band and one of them, Virna Nova, on stage with her on this tour was electrically connected on guitar and back up vocals.

It was a slow start up (well I thought it was – but then I often get criticized for my out of sync rhythm!) and a few sound problems persisted for a while but after 20 minutes or so the duo realized that the audience was right behind them, got ‘Toi yeu cac ban’ set into the acoustic system and started playing around with African beats and words with the Vietnamese phrase pounding behind and the night became as electric as we anticipated it would be and never really slowed up again.

At one stage, with the music racheting up to body grooving tempo, a tiny little poppet seemed to spontaneously climb onto the stage and dance to the beat. Quite delightfully Shirley Temple! Later a doting Dad placed two precious poppets on the stage for a photo op and a dance session. Delightful but a little tedious! Later still, three precious poppets joined the stage beat to the delight of delirious dads and it got more than delightfully tiresome. Did I see Gallo grind her teeth at one stage? But she carried on like the brilliant trouper she certainly is and as the final two encore Jam sessions erupted and the audience was on their feet dancing and none of it mattered except the stage presence of Gallo, Nova and – at that stage – a jamming Vietnamese drummer. (I hope that the Dads bought Gallo’s CD for the poppets to dance to at home. We did and it’s worth every dong we paid – and more.)

It’s great to see and feel an audience leave a theater as bouncy as they did on Thursday.

The press photographers had a field day too with one even invading the stage and it’s a wonder a few enthusiastic dancers didn’t fall over the balcony when the TV cameraman shone his arc light all over the audience.

Excellent night provided gratis by the Belgians (and as French was the lingua franca of the night, the organizers could have done the usual French thing….no speeches just get straight into it…allows the performers to jump into the fray without the formalities…always works at L’Espace.)

If I was lucky enough to get the Hue Festival I’d have made sure I was in their audience with enough room to move and groove.

Great stuff !

A couple of links to let you see La Gallo performing…and La Nova too.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1t1y_W3v-E&feature=related[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeP5PMLcSEc&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=AL94UKMTqg-9D8UOrlD_YYvARel6hfhX8y[/youtube]