“Tonight, I would like to celebrate this new place,” Angélique Kidjo said last night, a few songs into her set, the first ever in the new concert hall at Aviva Studios, the home of Factory International and the Manchester International Festival.
“As an artist, I have been dreaming about concert spaces that are more multi-functional. Where we don’t waste energy, we don’t waste space, and every form of art can be represented in one place, and finally this place is answering to my dreams as an artist.
“I hope that you in this city can understand the importance of this place and come every time something new comes here because this is a place where the world is going to come to you, and you can discover wonderful artists from around the world.”
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As ringing public endorsements go, those behind the biennial arts festival must have been over the moon. The show was pretty good too.
Few artists have made an impact on African music as profoundly as Benin’s Angélique Kidjo. Multiple Grammy winner, collaborator with an impossibly broad spectrum of artists, from Philip Glass to Ziggy Marley, Santana to Vampire Weekend, Burna Boy to David Byrne.
And in her first show at the MIF for a decade, she commanded this new stage, as the audience sunk into its plush new yellow seats (the bar allows no red wine into the auditorium, and probably quite rightly).
As a space, the ceiling towers above, but somehow remains extremely intimate, with stall seats that feel like they’re almost on stage with the artists and a balcony hanging over the top. Acoustically, it’s warm and enveloping, as Kidjo and her wildly skilled band kicked things off with their cover of Crosseyed and Painless, from her reimagining of Talking Heads’ Remain In Light.
It is at this point that I’d be happy to bet that every member of the audience wished they were standing. This isn’t seated music, and Angélique has moves for days, letting loose on stage while those in the crowd have to make do with shuffling in their seats.
Not only treating the audience to her own hits - Do Yourself, Mother Nature - she soon graciously offers up the stage to some of Manchester’s new and emerging talent. “My little sisters,” she says, before introducing Layfullstop who joins her to rap and sing on Fired Up.
Ellen Beth Abdi takes the stage next, raising up each of her mics as she does so. “Did the sound check without the boots, didn’t I,” she jokes in broad Mancunian, nodding down to her towering heels. Mesmerising, she loops up and layers her vocals live on her track Bad Dream, Kidjo’s band then joining in, before ‘the queen’ returns to the stage.
When she plays her polyrhythmic cover of Talking Heads’ classic Once In A Lifetime, the seating plan goes to pot. “Thank you for standing up finally,” she jokes. “In Africa, when the drums start playing, if you don’t move, you’re dead.”
Gorton rap icon OneDa joins her on stage too, playing her Mr Scruff collaboration Warrior’s Daughter, with all three artists rejoining Kidjo for Mama Africa. There’s a five-minute break when a errant bass solo briefly busts the sound system, but as first night hitches go, it could have been considerably worse.
Increasingly feeling like Manchester’s answer to the Southbank, this new concert hall is a fine addition to the city’s cultural scene, and this life affirming performance couldn’t have provided a more fitting debut for it.
Set List
CrossEyed and Painless
Do Yourself
Bemba Colora
The Great Curve
If Only (with Layfullstop)
Fired Up (with Layfullstop)
Meant For Me
Once in a Lifetime
The Bad Dream (with Ellen Beth Abdi)
Mother Nature (with Ellen Beth Abdi)
Choose Love
Free and Equal
Africa, One of a Kind (with OneDa)
Warriors Daughter (with OneDa)
Afirika (with all guests)
Pata Pata (with all guests)
Batonga (encore)
