Conventional wisdom has it that Manchester is a city dedicated to telling and retelling its own story. That every weekend, countless clubs play music made in the city \u2013 made by<\/i> the city, it starts to feel like \u2013 and everyone dances like Ten Storey Love Song<\/i> hasn\u2019t been on the playlist every weekend for past 20 years. Conventional wisdom has it that being homegrown here is important, that maybe it\u2019s better, even.<\/p>\n
Similarly, there is a popular notion of what music from Africa sounds like, or should sound like: like \u201cworld music\u201d, like Ladysmith Black Mambazo, like something that can be taken and repurposed or popularised by white artists.<\/p>\n
So to see Petite Noir, the South African (via the DRC, Angola and Belgium) singer-songwriter, in Manchester seems fitting. Not because his music sometimes sounds a lot like Joy Division, which it absolutely does, but because his music undermines the very notion of homegrown, undermines the familiarity and exclusivity that comes with that notion.<\/p>\n
The set opens like his new album, out this month, does, with a complex instrumental track \u2013 driven by drums and yet somehow frustratingly restrained, the escalation or drop just out of reach \u2013 called Intro Noirwave<\/i>. Noirwave is the term Petite Noir uses to describe his style. He defines it as a way of combining all his influences, as new wave with an African aesthetic, but what it means practically speaking is music that defies definition, that features elements of alt-RnB, dance, hip hop, punk.<\/p>\n
He joins his band on stage and they move wordlessly into Best<\/i>. What starts out as synthpop transforms, out of nowhere, into something completely different with the chorus: drums and jarring brass and a shouted refrain. I don\u2019t care what you will do \/ so please just go back home<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Till We Ghosts<\/i> and Shadows<\/i>, both from his King of Anxiety EP, follow, and live, they are surprisingly elastic: Petite Noir\u2019s music always sounds full \u2013 there\u2019s no other way to put it \u2013 but on stage, the songs swell, taking in more sound: heavier drums, basslines that fuzz and fray, reverb. If Petite Noir is retelling his story, it\u2019s an iterative (and I hate to admit it but I mean that in the agile-software-development way) retelling: it grows and changes each time, incorporating and interpreting new influences. His live show is a less computerised, rockier \u2013 and therefore much louder \u2013 affair than the studio album, which means that some of the nuance is lost, but the audience is too busy dancing to notice.<\/p>\n
And yet somehow, the gig has an intimate feel to it, an intimate sound. MDR<\/i> suggests a possible explanation: his earnest lyrics. Did you know you\u2019re beautiful \/ in every single way.<\/i> The song is twitchy and sweet, despite a nod towards the potential for heartbreak: Just don\u2019t \/ or you\u2019re gonna be my very end<\/i>. The second verse ends with a dramatic sigh before the chorus bubbles up: Cos you\u2019re the one that I want \/ You\u2019re the one that I need.<\/i><\/p>\n
Come Inside<\/i>\u2019s call and response has the audience singing back at him: You are not my only sacrifice<\/i>. He slings his white guitar round so he can show us when to clap, implore us to keep clapping. On Freedom<\/i>, he asks us to add our own voices \u2013 shouting \u201cwoo!\u201d of all things \u2013 to his baritone, and counts us in every time. Freedom comes at an expense \/ Freedom comes when you least expect it<\/i>. A more nuanced observation than it seems on the night, when the room is hot and everyone is dancing.<\/p>\n
When he speaks between songs, which is rare \u2013 he\u2019d rather rely on the music to do the crowd-work \u2013 his accent is unmistakeable. Accents are important here. \u201cYou guys are beautiful, man,\u201d he says towards the end of the gig, and at that word \u2013 \u201cman\u201d \u2013 I have the terrible impulse to go up to him after the gig and tell him I\u2019m from South Africa, too, as if that should mean something to him, or make us fast friends. As if being homegrown together \u2013 grown of a different home together \u2013 would be important, would make the usual (pretty excruciating) artist-fan interaction any better. As if it wouldn\u2019t be limiting. But it would be limiting: while his music feels deeply grounded in South Africa, it\u2019s also borderless, broader in range than almost anything out there at the moment.<\/p>\n
La Vie Est Belle<\/i>, which features Congolese rapper Baloji, is much more mournful-sounding and driving than the studio version. Down<\/i> starts with a fuzzy hum into the already-fuzzy mike before shifting into an incredibly danceable rhythm, his voice delicate and insistent all at once: Tell me now \/ are things gonna be alright? \/ We\u2019re not going down<\/i>. The audience fills in where the studio version features laughter. Everyone is moving and shining with sweat. He closes out the gig with Chess<\/i>, a track that shimmers with glitches and his falsetto. Tell me boy \/ do you really think we\u2019re gonna make it?<\/i> The song fills out, becomes denser, in waves, and then he is back to baritone: Tell me girl \/ do you really think I wanna break up?<\/i> It ends in what seems like a jam session, noise and unrelenting drums and Petite Noir turned away from us, bent double over his guitar. My ears will buzz for the next day.<\/p>\n
Petite Noir\u2019s stage presence is restrained, watchful, and I\u2019m reminded of something I read recently about the brilliant Christine and the Queens and how she inverts the usual audience gaze so that she desires from the stage rather than being desired while on stage. Even if his lyrics are introspective, Petite Noir\u2019s gaze, in terms of influence, aesthetic and sound, is outward, unbounded by the notion of what African art should<\/i> be. This is not \u201ctraditional\u201d; this is not \u201cworld music\u201d. This is noirwave, and there\u2019s no room for assumptions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Conventional wisdom has it that Manchester is a city dedicated to telling and retelling its own story. That every weekend, countless clubs play music made in the city \u2013 made by the city, it starts to feel like \u2013 and everyone dances like Ten Storey Love Song hasn\u2019t been on the playlist every weekend for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[15,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n