AWmusic

Life is good. In the past two weeks I have had the honour of listening to two great Canadian female jazz/blues vocalists and they weren’t Diana Krall or Holly Cole. On April 17th I had the pleasure of hearing Emilie Claire Barlow at the Living Arts Center in Mississauga and last Friday, the 24th of April, I saw Ndidi Onukwulu. If any of you have not heard these two women, you should. They are nothing like Diana Krall or Holly Cole, they are better. Where Diana Krall’s vocals can border on boring and Holly Cole has had pitch problems at times, you could not find those same faults in Barlowe or Onukwulu. How is it that these two women have been flying under the radar while the likes of Diana Krall are everywhere?

Ndidi Onukwulu grew up in small-town British Columbia. Her father is Nigerian jazz singer Ezeadi Onukwulu who has worked with the likes of the legendary King Sunny Ade and Youssou N’Dour. Her father also hosts an Afrobeat radio program in Vancouver. Ndidi left Vancouver and moved to New York City where she hoped she would be able to pursue her dreams of becoming a singer. She played open-mic nights and tended bar to pay the bills. Finding it too easy to get into trouble in NYC she returned to Canada, settling in Toronto where she joined various bands such as Stop Die Resuscitate. In Toronto she honed her off-beat eclectic sound and in 2006 released, No, I Never which she described as “a new form of African blues”. This album combined her love of the blues with her roots in Nigerian and Malagasy music. In June of 2008 she released her sophomore album, The Contradictor. On this album she builds on her love of the blues but adds touches of jazz, gospel, boogie, reggae and even country to the mix.

So it was with great interest that I sat myself down at the Rivoli to hear her sing. Her songs are unique, and she is totally amazing, having the unique talent of sounding like the soul/blues/jazz singers of the past such as Lena Horne, Ethel Waters and Billie Holliday yet making it sound far more contemporary and modern. I could hear her singing such standards as “Miss Otis Regrets”, “Stormy Weather”, or “The Blues are Brewin’” with absolutely no problem but I’m very glad that she sings her own contemporary, and often political, songs as they lift her way above the pack of blues/soul/r ‘n’ b female singers already clogging up our airwaves. As she recently described it to The Toronto Star’s Ashante Infantry, “I’ve always been drawn to blues music, spirituals, old original forms of North American music … but I’m fascinated with the concepts of simplicity and movement and emotion, and then in turn trying to create music that twists and bends in ways that are unexpected. I’m hoping one day to create a new form of blues, a more contemporary form that’s unique and original as that music was when it was beginning.”

She is also not above doing covers, “He Needs Me”, a cover of the Harry Nilsson song from the movie Popeye , is a throw-back to a time when Betty Grable and Fred Astaire were the Queen and King of the romantic comedy, a little soft-shoe between the chorus’s would not have been out of place. She also did a cover of Leslie Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me” which lifted the song above it’s cloying balladry to something with pizzazz. Her self-penned songs are beautiful, infused as they are with her distinctive take on blues/gospel/soul/jazz and she is a mesmerizing singer, commanding the stage, grabbing you by the throat and not letting go until the final note is played. You just cannot take your eyes off her. “Move Together” is an audience participation tune, we provided the handclaps and Onukwulu provided a powerful gospel tinged vocal that brought a revivalist meeting to the old Rivoli.

Her current back-up band is equally talented with fiddler/mandolin player Jesse Zubot being a stand-out playing a smoking fiddle solo on just two strings. He has to have the fasted hands I’ve ever seen on a fiddle player. There are many instruments that are difficult to play let alone play well but you would never know that the fiddle was one of them by watching Zubot play. To use a couple of overworked phrases, he was totally amazing, mind-blowing. Guitarist, Paul Pigot, was no slouch either, providing just the right bluesy licks and gospel flourishes when necessary without ever becoming intrusive on Onukwulu vocals.

Unfortunately for us all, Friday nights gig was her last Toronto appearance for some time as Onukwulu leaves for France where she will be playing numerous gigs around Paris until the end of May. She returns to Canada in June where she will be playing the Edmonton, Winnipeg and Vancouver Jazz Festivals. All the dates can be found on her website. You can also visit Onukwulu at her MySpace page. You can buy her music on iTunes, Artist Direct, Amazon.ca, Maple Music, Zunior.com, and your normal bricks and mortar retailers. She won’t be releasing another ablum until sometime next year but she has been airing new songs during her live shows so catch a preview before the album drops. It will be worth your while.

Opening for Onukwulu was Kinnie Starr whose views on music and mine differ greatly. She wasn’t bad but she lost me and, I think, most of the crowd when she insisted on reading from her book of poetry. I love poetry and have read many great poets over the years but let me just say she wasn’t one of them, at least, the poem she chose to read wasn’t the best. Her music is definitely “out there”, which isn’t a bad thing but it does make it difficult to connect to. And I’m sorry, Kinnie, but not every can or should rap.

Here are three songs from Onukwulu’s second album, Contradictor:

Ndidi Onukwulu – Almost JD
Ndidi Onukwulu – He Needs Me
Ndidi Onukwulu – Rise

Tags: concert