Soul II Soul returns the ‘flow’ to Barcelona
The British group Soul II Soul performed yesterday for the Barcelona public for the first time in its 34 years of life –they had only held private concerts here– reeling off songs from their concise but catchy discography. They only recorded five albums, between 1988 and 1997.
The band opened the Mas i Mas Festival with its special bath of urban rhythms made in uk that despite the time that has elapsed, they preserve the sophisticated style and of good tone that in their day were inspired by black music. Proof of those successes was the full capacity that the Palau de la Música Catalana appeared, with practically two thousand tickets of its capacity sold.
A heterogeneous public gathered in the modernist room. There were plenty of people nostalgic for those fabulous ’90s and the occasional young person –“we’re Danes on vacation and we’ve seen that there was this festival…”–, always ready to enjoy a group that guarantees dance moves.
If the seats had been removed, the Palau de la Música would have ended up being a five-star nightclub
Had he been able to do without the seats, the concert hall could have ended up yesterday as a five-star record. The body asked for it in mythical themes like that back to life with which the band triumphed in 1988 and that here put an end to the concert to loud applause. Too bad she wasn’t sung by Caron Wheeler, one of the three original members who follow and who has unfortunately fallen off the tour.
Instead Nadine Caesar opened fire with Zion a song from the band’s latest album, Believe , whose violin playing harkened back to a scene from James Bond. He followed Fair play from the debut album Club Classics. Volume 1 whose success led them to repeat in 1990 with vol. two marking the flow of the parties of a whole decade.
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Blessed craving the one that Joan Mas has had bringing a band that in Barcelona from Olympic fervor to the delights of the dance floors. A city that at that time was extremely permeable to proposals bordering on acid jazz and in this case acid soul. We are talking about the Young Disciples, Incognito, James Taylor Quartet, US3 or the special Galliano who in 1991 attended the Aliança del Poblenou with the secret attitude of London clubbing combined with atypical clothing.
That Barcelona briefly resurfaced yesterday during the reunion with Soul II Soul, which coincided –curiously– with the anniversary of the Olympic Games. Jazzie B, creator of the band and well-known DJ, led the concert from the production table, although the sound was not as clean as expected.
Along with Caesar, three vocalists were responsible for raising their seats to the respectable, supported by bassist Chris Brown, Julien Brown on drums, Gill Morley and Ellen Blair on violins, Kashta Tafari on guitar and Nathan Johmson and Brian Henry on keyboards. All of them dressed in lace and corsets typical of the Prince era, they did little honor to their name by interpreting a strange and uninteresting version of Nothing compares to U.
He enhanced the night with mythical melodies like Keep on moving’, who sang another Soul II Soul legend, Charlotte Kelly, with the typical blonde hair and dreadlog. And other recognizable melodies followed, like Dream’s a Dream, today, universal love either holding on combination of hip hop, reggae, funk and pop that gave African-British music a shake three decades ago, with the self-confident good-naturedness of a tribe that was originally authentically Cold.
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