There is music that reaches down into your gut and twists, there is music that clamps around your heart and squeezes and there is music that teases out your spirit and frees it. Johnny Clegg writes music like all of that.

He writes songs that tell universal stories. Stories of heroes, journeys of discovery, betrayal, love, passion, and revolution, of history, landscape and place. Ultimately the message is of hope.

Ever since the concert last Friday night his voice seems to be hard wired into my brain. A private radio station to which I dance around the house while my husband Thatch tries to guess which song I can hear, by the rythmn of it.

I hadn’t intended to weblog the concert because I knew that Thatch was going to and I had written about Johnny some weeks earlier, but I am compelled.

If he, as he promised, will be touring here again next year - I want other people who have never heard of him or his music to find out about it. I’ve become an evangelist of sorts. My good taste chip is flashing warning lights here, so I’ll carry this allusion no further.

On a personal level, my response to hearing the music live was surprisingly uninhibited and emotional and the joy inside me just leaked out through my eyes and feet. However I managed to collect myself every so often to take a picture. I’m putting up a page so that I can share that part of the concert with you. Meanwhile I’ve posted a couple of them here.

Dallas Brooks Hall is still a very good music venue and given that we had seats up in the balcony it sounded okay. For my money there could have been more drums, more bass and more backup vocals. The overall sound was altogether way too civilised.

Johnny regaled us with snippets from his history, explaining where some of the songs came from and the people and events that inspired them. When the audience finally surged to it’s feet enmass in the second bracket, the smiles and energy on stage doubled.

There is a new album due, (it will probably be released next year in time for the expected tour.) I’ve heard that the album will be heavily Zulu influenced, but then I also heard that the album was to have been released in the middle of this year.

A feature of Johnny Clegg’s music has always been the dancing and while it is now only a minor and certainly less energetic part of the show than it used to be, nevertheless the onstage dancing was met with cheers of approval.

An ex-pat South African in the crowd told be how he had seen Johnny Clegg and Jaluka perform in 1983 I think he said. In any case Johnny danced regularly with four Zulu back then.

When he comes back to Australia, go see the show. It will not disappoint.
Logging off,
Jools