The rapper astonishes, for better and for worse, with his new age flute show at the Wilfrid-Pelletier hall.
Let’s be honest, we weren’t very impressed with New Blue Sun, his new age flute album released last year. If the approach was laudable, we cannot say that the result was 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 trademark 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 has played a significant role in André 3000’s new musical direction.
From the first bars, we understood that the concert would be less soft than the album. More noise than new age, the group launched into an improvisation with free jazz hints 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 from the pre-Columbian era.
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 deviate from the beaten path 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 being certain that his talent as a flutist lives 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, seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed this relatively short show – and without an encore – which ended with a powerful sound magma, similar to the one that opened the evening. André 3000 also made the audience laugh, speaking in a mystical language that was ultimately nothing more than gibberish.
In short, the best and the worst. But above all, an astonishing proposal, which could make little ones. Despite its flaws, and its 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 are looking for a way out to renew themselves.