The rapper astonishes, for better and for worse, with his new age flute show at the Wilfrid-Pelletier hall.
Published yesterday at 11:44 p.m.
Let’s be honest, we weren’t very impressed with New Blue Sunhis new age flute album released last year. While the approach was commendable, the result was not very convincing, to put it politely.
Suffice to say that we did not have high expectations for the show version of this introspective record, offered Sunday evening at the Wilfrid-Pelletier hall by the rapper André 3000. Our only certainty is that the Jazz Festival was taking a big risk in scheduling it at “prime time” and in a big room to boot.
(Re)read our article “Jazz Festival: the new breath of the flute”
Were we surprised? Hard to say. André 3000’s show is a musical UFO that we don’t really know how to evaluate.
Dressed in his eternal striped overalls, beanie and funky designer glasses, the former member of the popular group Outkast arrived on stage with his bamboo flutes and four musicians, including percussionist/producer Carlos Nino, who played a significant role in the new musical direction of André 3000.
From the first bars, we understood that the concert would be less soft than the album. More noisy than new age, the group launched into an improvisation with hints of free jazz and psychedelics that Pink Floyd in Pompeii would not have denied. The flautist then introduced himself, taking care to thank the audience for their energetic contribution, essential in this collective experience.
Let’s give credit to André 3000 and his group for knowing how to create atmospheres. For a large part of the show, you would have thought you were in the depths of an Ecuadorian jungle, an impression reinforced by the sounds of birds and André’s wind instruments, flutes of various cultures coming out of bush or pre-Columbian times.
The atmosphere, sometimes contemplative, sometimes more chaotic, was reinforced by an active lighting effect, with purple rays, bluish lights and occasional strobe flashes, which projected us sometimes at the foot of a volcano, sometimes in a massage parlor.
Musically, it was a little less conclusive. André 3000 certainly has the courage to stray from the beaten track and we can only applaud his audacity, which commands respect, if not admiration. But the ex-rapper is neither Yusef Lateef, nor Max Cilla, nor Hariprasad Chaurasia and we are far from certain that his talent as a flautist is up to his artistic aspirations.
To put it another way, we have the impression that our man is sometimes losing his way, and that his musical explorations don’t lead to much. Despite the exotic percussion, the layers of keyboards, the spiritual varnish, something is still missing, let’s call it a form of transcendence.
We are apparently not the only ones to have remained perplexed by these absolutely non-commercial explorations. In front of us, a few dozen people left the room successively during the concert, possibly disconcerted, if not disappointed.
The rest of the audience, on the other hand, seems to have perfectly appreciated this relatively short show – and without an encore – which ended with a powerful magma of sound, similar to the one which opened the evening. André 3000 also made the audience laugh, speaking in a mystical language which was ultimately just gibberish.
In short, some good and some bad. But above all, an astonishing proposition, which could have some imitators. Despite its flaws, and its relatively relative interest, André 3000’s flute project remains a fine example of artistic risk and a potential source of inspiration for other aging rappers who would be looking for a way out to renew themselves.
