Raising the rafters in Rye
TOM BLASS heard Laura Mvula at Rye International Jazz and Blues Festival last weekend
What one wonders, did Laura Mvula think of her audience, the good burghers of Rye and environs, crammed expectantly into the pews of St Mary’s church and no less snugly into our ‘jazzy’ shirts and jackets and trousers? Whom amongst, she asked had even heard of her before they’d booked their tickets? “Oh yes!”, we piped up. “I have! I have!”
Indeed, I had, because she is famous – and as she reminded us – had won lots of prizes (amongst them, two MOBOS, three Mercurys and a brace of Ivor Novellos). Though I might have been hard pressed to remember, hum or recognize a trademark song of hers or even associate her music with any particular genre. Was she jazz? Or pop? Or soul? Gospel? And/or who cared?
Having now witnessed the phenomenon that is her, I now have a more coherent grasp of her music. She was unaccompanied by orchestra, which meant we had a full, unadulterated blast of Mvula, the singer, pianist and raconteur: a huge and perfectly formed voice of extraordinary versatility and range, lovely piano playing – big, dreamy arpeggios and crafted musings betraying her classical training and compositional skill – and between songs, lots of talking, with a kind of good-humoured, slightly confrontational ballsy candour: “This song is about dating apps. Is anyone here on any dating apps? [cue nervous audience twitter]. I’m on three…”
I can’t remember what the song was called, or any of the lyrics, but it was soulful and wistful and well-timbred, as were all the best of her songs. For Mvula fans, I expect that those qualities are most intoxicatingly distilled in the album Sing to the Moon, from which the eponymous track was her first big hit, and which one year she sang at the Proms. And Church Girl – a wry choice for a church in Rye? And didn’t she just know how to play us too…? She opened the second set with the opening bars of one of Eric Satie’s Trois Gymnopedies, instantly recognisable to the demographic slab to whom it was addressed, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Radio 3….” Ha ha. You got us there Laura.
But all in all, it was a curious convergence of place, audience, and performer. Mvula is a force of nature. Her voice could have filled five St Mary’s Churches and stretched the rafters of this one, and she well deserved the voluminous and enthusiastic applause she received. I can see what fires the accolades. But for me, musically, the many and manifest strands of talent didn’t always come together to create the magic that one always hopes to experience at a concert – that shift in register from enjoying to being uplifted. But hell, it was a good night, and a great excuse to shake the moths from that seersucker suit, to don the Panama hat and give those overly-tight jeans one last jazzy night out before consigning them forever to the loft or an undeserving charity.
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