The three-day online version of Eurosonic featured a lot of new European talent. Still, the question is how representative the short performances are in the end. Eurosonic is normally a live performance festival. Here programmers choose artists who will perform in the Netherlands in the coming period and during the festival season. There they will play live. The fact that a number of groups now submitted video clips or playback recordings for this Eurosonic edition was therefore a missed opportunity.
A number of trends could be discovered in the generous offer – three simultaneous live streams per evening. For example, a striking amount of music was played live, with all kinds of instruments, instead of a single synthesizer. Perhaps the lockdown has, paradoxically, given the impetus to more interplay on acoustic instruments. Even in genres where the front person is traditionally accompanied by only a DJ with a laptop, such as hip hop, complete bands were now on stage.
Shunaji from Rome was an example of this. Accompanied by a bass, drums and keyboards, this rapper/producer’s fierce syllables wandered along cross notes. In ‘Black Girl Blues’ for example, she connected the words in an impressive twisting route, via humor and anger, to a rattling indignation in English, Spanish and Italian.
Shunaji was also a representative of another trend. Possibly prompted by the growing popularity of ‘spoken word’ performance, a large number of women merged hip-hop with jazz here. Fierce than spoken word, but with the same sultry accents.
Smartlap-rap
The band of Denise Chaila, representative of the Irish hip-hop scene, played a sultry accompaniment to its flowing but slightly too sweetly rapped references to jazz and Nat King Cole.
Fortunately, the tough Spanish Santa Salut, also with a live band, a welcome contrast: in a tearful tone she sang her ‘trickler rap’, interrupted by an occasional tirade so explosive that the band members looked at each other in surprise.
Singer gaidaa, from the Netherlands, sings associative melodies, in a minor key. In the organic sounding instrumentations, it is the rustling cymbals and the tinkling of the piano that give a ‘natural’ and comforting effect.
More women stood out: the Hungarian Deva, alone behind a double row of keyboards and laptops, was impressive both musically and vocally. Her voice multiplied into mysterious choral singing, framed by electronic pulses and clattering arpeggios from her keyboard.
Jazzy + Instructive
In the rock genre, there was good news from England, in the form of the quartet Yard Act, which turned out to package his laconic revulsion in stiff songs. There was somewhat stiff post-punk from the German trio Sparkling, and there was the promising Icelandic duo BSic. The singing drummer and a bassist play streamlined songs in which rhythms are dressed up with floating synthesizers and languorous vocals.
All trends came together with rap star Enny from London. She had a band, had jazzy accents and also had some beautiful songs, which she rapped in an empathetic and instructive tone. The already somewhat famous Enny, who is of Nigerian descent, paid tribute to young black women in her hit song ‘Peng Black Girls’ (‘Attractive Black Women’). In the words, Enny, with her characteristic flair, pleads for more visibility for herself and her neighbors: “There’s peng black girls in my area code/ Dark skin, light skin, medium tone.” But: “Never wanna put us in the media, bro.”
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