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Music, art, and resistance - James Blake stunned but Saint Levant stole the show.
At the end of last month INJECTION magazine was sent to the Île de Seguin in the southwest of Paris, for a music festival, a new event series, TONES, set up by COLORS. The TONES series debuted in New York earlier in the month, with Paris being the second instalment. The festival took place across Paris, with events held at La Seine Musicale on the outskirts of Paris, and also at the Alhambra Theatre and Essex Street Market Paris, where Ms Lauryn Hill was signing autographs the week before, and celebrity chef Max Rocha hosted a private event the week after.
Tones, a week-long event, had its main event on Saturday, and INJECTION attended the evening shows in the fantastic arena at La Seine Musicale, which the week before was showing a musical adaptation of La Haine. People came down from central Paris and beyond to the little island in the Seine for an evening of culture, music, community, and more.
TONES
German music performance platform COLORS’s latest creation, TONES, is a new avenue to introduce emerging talent worldwide, transcending borders, cultures, and prejudice. TONES is city-based, to capture the aesthetic of a city with music, art, and fashion over the course of a week. To this end, the New York series would have felt very different to Paris, just as the two cities have their own unique character. Although nothing has been said officially regarding a new city, TONES are clear that they plan to expand this series beyond New York and Paris. Eyes and ears open, London.
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Amanda Reifer
Amanda Reifer of Cover Drive fame kicked off the evening’s performance. The Bajan singer delivered a set of Caribbean-influenced pop and R&B. Possibly leaning more towards pop than Cover Drive used to play, she still kept a strong grounding in her ‘Carrib-pop’ roots. COLORS and TONES are proud of their mixing of different artists, well-known and up-and-comers, and Reifer is a good example of the latter. The crowd enjoyed her performance and it was a fantastic start to the evening. It was the first time Reifer was back on stage after a period away from music following the disbanding of Cover Drive, and she showcased some brand-new music which was exciting to see. Watch this space, Amanda Reifer isn’t going anywhere but up.
The Joy
The Joy are a South African acapella band, formed from a school choir. They have played at the Hammersmith Apollo and made several collaborative tracks with Doja Cat. A heartwarming, happy, and soulful performance had people dancing and swaying to the music. Their acapella style comes from isicathamiya music, a Zulu form of singing that they attribute as a key influence. Although the set felt a little like a Pentecostal or Baptist church service, it was thoroughly enjoyable. The aptly named Joy were having so much fun themselves, the rest of the crowd quickly got on board.
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NAÏKA
Although the initial chords of the backing group made the song sound like a YouTube advert, as soon as NAÏKA came on stage she silenced the doubters. The band also quickly got into the rhythm and stopped sounding automated. NAÏKA’s stage presence was phenomenal, dressed in a sort of wedding dress marshmallow (it was a look). Her voice rang out in Spanish, French, and English interchangeably, switching language with the ease of someone swapping lanes on an empty motorway.
The crowd immediately warmed to her and her Shakira-esque stage presence. Originally from Haiti, she has French roots and grew up influenced by African, European, and Caribbean music, which comes out strongly in her work.
Incidentally, she is currently dating follow-up performer Saint Levant - the two even played together at the Boiler Room (US) last September. Talk about a power couple. In Paris on Saturday she had the whole crowd dancing and cheering, setting the scene for her partner, who followed her act. If it had been anyone else, I would have been worried about following such an energised and fluid performance.
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Saint Levant
Marwan Abdelhamid was born in Jerusalem to Algerian-French, Palestinian-Serbian parents, during the Second Intifada. Similar to his partner, Saint Levant can swim through languages with ease, mostly between Amiyah Arabic, French, and English, often switching mid-song or even mid-sentence. Although the songs themselves are quite auto-tuny, which can at times be a little jarring, they were generally fantastic. Saint Levant’s energy was unmatched, and his enthusiasm infectious. He had people dancing, shouting, cheering. Palestinian flags waved, Keffiyehs were worn proudly.
Saint Levant’s use of Arab-influenced backing music, accompanied by a banjo and fiddle, gave his songs a fantastically unique sound. As INJECTION heard numerous times during and after the gig by adoring fans, he is also somewhat of an international heartthrob. Think Palestinian Matthew McConaughey.
At one point, nearing the end of the set, Saint Levant stopped the music and addressed the crowd, calling for support for his people in the Middle East.
“We have survivors’ guilt. Our problems are their problems. In the diaspora, we must remember them. No matter how much they try to erase us, our identity, we must remember our existence is resistance. We are still here.”
“Free, free Palestine” rang out as the penultimate song ended. For the finale, he brought out a Palestine flag saxophone, which, although I didn’t think possible after his heart-wrenching speech, ended his performance on an even higher level. The headliner had yet to come on, but the reigning feeling was that the crowd had seen the high point.
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James Blake
It was never going to be easy for Blake to follow Saint Levant.
He leaned much more into his UK Bass roots, setting up a fifteen-minute-long dub session on the decks that, although very good, seemed to not be what the French were looking for. He relented eventually and went back to the better-known Overgrown style, going as British as humanly possible (at one point stopping the song to drink a cup of tea). They loved it. Who wouldn’t love Angèle stopping a gig in Wembley to munch on a croissant?
He put on a great show, but, maybe through no fault of his own, was unable to reach the heights of Saint Levant. “Music is the answer to the world’s problems", he said at one point; a poignant reminder of current times. He kept things quite acoustic, in keeping with the general TONES theme of the evening. For the most part, if you like James Blake, you would have liked the gig; he James Blake’d it, dub interlude aside.
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Overall, The Joy were wholesome and wonderfully soulful, NAÏKA wowed us with her language skills, her dancing, and obviously her singing. James Blake appealed to old and new fans. But the night was Saint Levant’s. A phenomenal live performance that had everyone singing and dancing, bringing together all who have been horrified by the crimes in the Middle East into a joyous revolt. After so many of us have stood in the rain protesting against deaf ears over the past year, it was amazing to hear the music of Palestine shouted across the Seine.
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