Emily’s D+Evolution was about to rock my world and I was totally unprepared.

I showed up super early, anticipating a line going down the block, and I was the first person to the Englert. NO SHAME.

After spending some time in the lobby hearing the ushers talk about the sound check, I thought I’d explode. They used words and phrases like “theatrical” and “choreographed” and praised the “bright lights” and “carefully crafted stage materials.” How could I contain myself?

Finally, the doors opened. Walking in, I saw a brightly lit stage with tall red curtains on the sides and white ones in the middle. The colors looked elegant and mature, but based on the gossip in the lobby, I knew I could expect wild and psychedelic colors  later in the show.

Emily and her fellow musicians entered the stage promptly at 8:00 PM (thank god), and they began with “Farewell Dolly.” I was surprised that she chose to do her set in a different order than her album, because Emily’s D+Evolution makes a lot of sense as a work of art every time I listen to the whole thing on Spotify. However, last night I learned that changing the order of the songs creates different meanings.

After she finished “Farewell Dolly,” Emily spoke conversationally to the audience about the “depressing” last line of the song: “nature’s dead up in my head.”

For five minutes, she spoke about the kind of art she wanted to create for us that night, taking long pauses as if making up her mind on stage. I ended up whispering to the person next to me, “is this a part of the show?” because her acting was so convincing.

I should have known, though, that she would have planned that moment just as her group choreographed and orchestrated such complex lighting and stage props. She decided on not doing the play that was listed in the program (which makes me wonder if they created the program just so they could rip them up?) and tore off her black veiled dress and wig to reveal all-white clothing and braids underneath, and of course, she put on Emily’s glasses and crown as she began “Elevate or Operate.”

As the lighting changed from red to green and her backup singers acted as puppeteers behind her, controlling her movements, the stage looked like a scene from a child’s dream. Paper flowers coated the bottom of the curtains and changed colors with the lighting and Emily moved around the stage according to the puppeteers’ orders.

Her improvisations kept reminding me that this show was live; her voice sounded so smooth, so flawless that I could have been listening to an edited, polished album.

They played “Ebony and Ivy,” one of my favorite songs off this album and the red, white and blue lighting in the background had to be intentional. In this song, Emily and her backup singers discuss how American academia is still entrenched in antiblackness and profited off of the exploitation of black bodies and minds. The song title probably references a recently published book by Craig Steven Wilder about how slavery benefited higher institutions of learning.

Afterwards, they performed “Noble Nobles.” At the end of this song, and in a somber moment, she opened a book on stage and mournfully pulled out a pair of metal shackles.

She followed this song with “Judas,” changing the lights on stage to bright pink and purple. During the whole performance, Emily attempted to convince her backup dancers to move past the systematic way, the professional and structured concert, the prim and proper behavior expected of them. They insisted she follow a plan but she pushed back, wanting to dance and improvise to their disapproval.

Emily finally convinces them to let loose in “One,” and during this transformation, her backup singers unzipped parts of their clothing to reveal bright yellow and orange cloth underneath. The musicians moved into an extended improvised section and transitioned into “Funk the Fear,” as the backup dancers tore up their programs and created their own crowns, moving into the audience and encouraging us to get up and dance too. Repeating the anthem, “funk the fear, live your life,” the audience moved with the musicians and the trippy rainbow lighting.

Finally, Emily had convinced us to let go and feel free. She fittingly begins her next song with, “now what are we gonna do/with our two fiery souls?” At this moment, I realized she created a different story by rearranging the songs in her album and I fell in love again with D+Evolution.

During “Rest in Pleasure,” she teaches each of her backup singers a sensual hip movement and eventually they all moved in sync and looked so free and light. This was my favorite performance of the evening.

Their last song of the evening, “Unconditional Love,” made so much sense.”We could change the whole story of love, same old play I’m getting tired of. No more acting these predictable roles, just us living, unconditional love.” She seemed to plead her musicians and the audience with these lyrics, and we were totally with her.

Before the song finished, Emily, her guitarist and percussionist performed over five minutes of intense improvised music and soloing while the backup singers set up a strange metal contraption in the middle of the stage. When they finally finished, they held up a quilt which read “LOVE” with a backwards E and took a bow bringing their performance to an end. However, when the lights turned off, the audience realized the purpose of the quilt and the metal contraption behind them.

The audience cheered for a last song, and finally Emily walked out again saying “well, there aren’t anymore songs in the story, but I can sing something else” and graced us with an a cappella rendition of a song from an earlier album.

The night was magical, pure, and transformative. I’m so thankful I saw their performance, and I have a more profound understanding of the depth of her latest album.

To keep up on all things Esperanza and Emily, check out her sleek website and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Concert Review: Emily’s D+Evolution @ The Englert 10/25/16 appeared first on KRUI Radio.

There is so much diversity on the list of albums that I will be listening to. Some of which are AC/DC, Kelly Clarkson, The Sound of Music Original Broadway Soundtrack, Jimi Hendrix, and The Beatles (a lot of The Beatles). There’s so much that I haven’t listened to that has been influential enough to sell hundreds of millions of times, and that is sad to me. And so here comes the change that I have been longing for. I am excited for Variety Show, and I hope you enjoy. I’ll be starting with the Music Man Original Broadway Soundtrack.

The Music Man has a pretty impressive background. The original cast performed the musical 1,375 times and won five Tony awards, including Best Musical. The soundtrack won the first Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album and was on the Billboard charts for 245 weeks. For twelve of those weeks, it was #1. There have been two film adaptions (1962 and 2003) since the show stopped running on Broadway.

Overall, The Music Man is something I’ve only ever heard about in passing. I think it was referenced in Friends once, and my ten-year-old cousin has been obsessed with it for quite some time now. The numbers on the original Broadway soundtrack are stunning, but I’ve still never watched it or heard any of the music. It’s probably due to one of my long held secrets/unpopular opinions.

I honestly don’t really like musicals. If they’re just the right degree of cheesy/overrated I may love them, but only the film adaptions. I could recite every line of Grease, and the Sound of Music is one of my favorite movies, and Hairspray is the only way I can really stand Amanda Bynes anymore (“Without Love” is a banger), but I love these in spite of their classification as a musical. I probably wouldn’t even mention it if I didn’t have to write about a few more in the future (including Grease and Oklahoma!), so pretty please don’t come at me with pitchforks.

I do appreciate the musical as a work of art, however, even if I can barely sit through an entire performance. I cannot imagine the amount of work that comes with having to create the composition for the songs that melt perfectly with the plot that has to be written for the cast, along with performing it all live with an audience that will still come up with something that went wrong. The collaboration between different departments in a musical is crazy. That being said, I know that I can’t just look up “The Music Man” on Spotify and just listen to the music. I have to watch it in order to get the full effect.

Unfortunately, it isn’t 1957 anymore and even if it was I probably still couldn’t afford a Broadway ticket. There also isn’t a recording of the original Broadway performance anywhere on the internet, naturally, so I watched the 1962 film rendition of The Music Man. I did my best to pretend that I was watching it on Broadway in the 50’s.

The premise of the musical is simple enough: a traveling salesman lands himself in River City, Iowa to scam an entire town into buying musical instruments to save their soon-to-be-corrupted youth. This corruption is supposedly going to ensue because of a pool table? Anyways this salesman, “Professor” Harold Hill, lays his eyes on Marian, the town librarian and piano teacher. He tries to woo her and (spoiler alert) eventually succeeds. She convinces the town not to tar-and-feather Harold after they inevitably find out that he isn’t a musician, but a salesman. The story finally (after two and a half extremely slow hours) ends with Harold’s change of heart, leading the town’s newfound marching band into the distance.

I am so sure that The Music Man would’ve been much more spectacular on a stage in every way. The recordings from the Broadway cast were light-years better than the film soundtrack. I loved how rhythm-based the songs are from the very beginning of the musical with “Rock Island” and throughout the musical with “Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little” There were also a ton of brilliant harmonies in barbershop quartet style in “Sincere” and “Goodnight”. The songs (mostly) all included brass instrumental backgrounds. The main title of the movie was spectacular, and was reprised at the end of the musical with “Seventy-Six Trombones”.

The musical overall is very predictable. The handsome man and beautiful woman end up together and the people end up content in their corn-surrounded town. The musical is also (naturally) very outdated. There are several songs that have sexist themes, and at least one very racist scene. A woman must have a man to make her complete, the librarian must go out with the salesman just because he’s asking, and of course Native Americans wore those headdresses all the time. You can’t really expect anything different from a musical that was written over fifty years ago, but it still makes me cringe watching it.

The verdict: The Music Man didn’t convince me to love musicals, but I wasn’t really expecting it to. I did find an album that was extremely calming to listen to, however. The voices on the Broadway soundtrack were extremely soothing, and I would listen to them again if I also wasn’t watching the play/movie. My favorite songs were by far “Main Title/Rock Island,” “Seventy-Six Trombones,” and “Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little/Goodnight.”

Listen to The Music Man Original Broadway Soundtrack on YouTube here or on Spotify below.

https://open.spotify.com/user/elaineleigh/playlist/0g73lzOx9BlfiP8p5NhqHm

Variety Show is a weekly column that is in the midst of analyzing the best-selling albums from the 1950’s to the 1990’s. One of the top 10-20 albums from each decade will be reviewed, discussed and/or analyzed each week in chronological order. The column aims to draw cultural, musical, and other contextual connections between artists and albums over time, as well as go on a broad but refined journey. Next week we’ll be talking about “Hymns” by Tennessee Ernie Ford, the ninth best-selling album from the 1950’s.

The post Variety Show: The Music Man Original Broadway Soundtrack appeared first on KRUI Radio.