Artist:Daby Toure
Venue:The Sage
Town:Gateshead
Date:12/03/09
Website:http://www.myspace.com/dabytoure
Daby Toure took to the stage dressed casually in green trousers and a brown slogan t-shirt and launched straight into a beautiful song in African, which he performed completely solo, accompanying himself on guitar. You could have heard a pin drop.
As his two man band joined him onstage, he introduced his French drummer from Paris and electric guitarist from Senegal, Africa.
The stage was lowered, which created an even more intimate atmosphere in the two thirds full Hall two, bringing Daby closer to his audience.
From the outset, he had this audience in the palm of his hand. The joy emanating from the stage was tangible; Daby encouraging everyone to stand up, move closer to the stage, dance, clap, tap their toes, whatever the music made them feel like doing. "Why are you sitting down? Who told you? I want to share something with you tonight, something that is real. This is real, not a movie. Allez. Come and join me. Move all the chairs if you want to or come up front." Several times during the set, he had the audience singing and chanting back to him in African and loving every moment of it; a fait accomplis in itself, surely?
We were treated to several upbeat numbers, which literally filled the room with music, once again demonstrating the great acoustics of The Sage. Even more noticeable was the sheer joy of being in a room filled with this music; it brought to mind Kathy Mattea's theory of The Joyful Noise - that if everyone commits to sing loudly, you experience the sheer joy of music moving through your body - we certainly all felt that during the hour and a half that Daby and the band played. He obviously felt it too; more than once he commented on how the energy in the room was amazing.
It is incredible how you can understand not a word of what is being said and yet still feel the emotion of the song, albeit in a different way. It is certainly more about the music speaking for itself and reaching your soul. It is almost as if the music somehow finds a way to break down the language barrier.
For one song, Daby sat back in the shadows of the stage, allowing the electric guitarist to take centre stage, before getting up and joining him. These three musicians clearly have a lot of mutual respect.
The highlight of the night for me was hearing Lost Voices from his EP with Skip MacDonald, Will You Call My Name. He prefaced the song by saying, "Children can be alone. Do you want to sing this song with me for them?" again inviting the audience to sing back lines to him of this beautiful song.
All too quickly the set was over and they exited the stage to huge applause and stomping of feet. Returning a few minutes later, Daby quipped, "It's time to go to sleep." His accent, a mixture of African and French is such that I could just as easily have listened to him talk all night, but I still thoroughly enjoyed his encore of two songs.
His parting words I think were very telling; "Thankyou so much for coming tonight. I really appreciate the different people I meet and chances to learn with different people and different cultures. This is exactly what we are all doing tonight. I hope you one day can come to Mauritania, or at least France for a cup of tea; but the real cup of tea, that is in Mauritania." I suspect lots of people will be wondering how to take up that invitation, or at the very least, wondering when they can next see him perform.
I think what we all took from this show, is a reminder that for all we may come from different places, speak different languages and play different music, we are all the same. It struck me as being particularly apt that he is signed to a label called Real Music. Maybe, just maybe, whatever its origins and whatever form it takes, good music is real music. That is certainly what we all shared with Daby Toure in the Sage tonight.
Helen Mitchell
No comments:
Post a Comment