Sunday 17 November 2024
Stoller Hall, Manchester
*****
Cellist Abel Selaocoe and Manchester Collective stand on the shoulders of ancestors to create an evening of joyous, life-affirming music
‘Home is where one starts from.’
T.S. Eliot East Coker (Four Quartets)
In his poem East Coker, T.S. Eliot wrote, ‘Home is where one starts from.’ Manchester Collective have been touring Sirocco, their collaboration with South African cellist Abel Selaocoe, since June 2018 when they first performed the programme at the Stoller Hall. Coming full circle, they ended their latest tour of the show, which had begun in Prague earlier in the month, at their home in Manchester.
Selaocoe said how pleased he was to be home, and this concert was based on a sense of place both in geography and history. Sirocco combined African music and Western classical music, sometimes juxtaposed and sometimes in the same piece. This mixing of styles has been described as ‘fusion’, but Selaocoe, talking to BBC News Africa, rejected the term,
“This is not fusion, but an opportunity for different places to live in the same space.“
Selaocoe told the audience that the Sirocco project has been a melting pot of musical languages from people who had grown up on different continents; ultimately a ‘plea for us to listen to each other.’
Introducing the second piece, Improvisation, he invited us to leave Earth and join him and the Collective on a journey to the cosmos. Selaocoe began with spiritual whispering, as if summoning up the ghosts of his ancestors, with a high melody on his cello, and gently strummed bass guitar from Alan Keary, with the very human sound of the talking drum from percussionist Sidiki Dembele. Selaocoe gently intoned an endless melody as we journeyed towards the stars. A frenetic cello motif, constantly evolving, led to a moment of stasis as we left the Earth’s atmosphere, then percussion and cello rose together as we reached the stratosphere. Floating in space, a serene solo cello looked down over the earth from afar.
Three movements from Purcell’s Fairy Queen were illuminated by the improvisation, becoming a stately place to be, as a cosmic dance lifted the spirits, and we began to move quickly through the cosmos past the stars. The journey wasn’t only across space but through time, back to the end of the 18th century when Purcell wrote The Fairy Queen.
Selaocoe spoke movingly about the voices of his ancestors, who passed on not just their name but their stories, and on whose shoulders he felt privileged to stand. In Ibuyile L’Africa, which described liberation from apartheid in South Africa, there was a heart-stopping moment when he, the Collective and Keary sang a gorgeous South African choral piece in the style of Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
Ibuyile was paired with a movement from Haydn’s String Quartet Op. 76 No.1, played with elegance and poise by a quartet of Selaocoe on cello and the three string players from the Collective. Selaocoe saw this as part of the dialogue between musical traditions – in his mind, a fabric binds Western classical music with African music. He also saw links between African music and the work of Benjamin Britten, whose March from Three Divertimenti the quartet delivered with fierce brilliance, swooping strings, and amazing precision and attack; the piece felt both timeless and contemporary. Selaocoe said he would have enjoyed hanging out with Britten outside the technicalities of music, and that Britten used his techniques in an African style.
The Britten piece was followed by O Fredrik, O Fredrik by contemporary Norwegian composer Johannes Rusten. Electric bass and percussion joined the string quartet, another example of different traditions collaborating; the piece was arranged by the superb Danish String Quartet, and re-arranged again by adding African instruments. The two Singh sisters, Rakhi and Simmy, danced as they played a folky African melody, and Keary’s bass playing was seriously funky. Simmy provided a stunning, jazzy solo in the style of Jean-Luc Ponty or Stéphane Grappelli. As Selaocoe, said, the thread that binds the greatest music, is the groove, present not just in the Scandinavian sound of Rusten, but in classical music, jungle music and everywhere.
“This concert is a love letter to music and camaraderie. Music is a language that transcends borders and space and time… Manchester Collective is all about community”
Jasmin Kent Rodgman, Co-Artistic Director, Manchester Collective
Selaocoe’s sense of traditional African music and Western classical music existing in the same space was also evident in the opening piece, Qhawe [‘those who ask questions will find answers’]. It began with an austere, intense solo cello, with a touch of Bach, followed by Selaocoe’s phenomenal African throat singing. He told BBC Africa that he learned this style from the singing women of the Xhosa people, using a voice that took him to ‘a much more magical place.’ He began as if he was almost talking to himself, with rapid breathing. Then he stood to address the audience with passionately rhythmic, stentorian singing, his sheer physical presence absolutely compelling. The variety of his vocal talents was illustrated later by Lerato, in which he sang with a gentle, plaintive, bluesy voice, achingly beautiful, accompanied by gorgeous, hymn-like meditative harmonies from the women of the Collective.
Percussionist Sidiki Dembele, from Côte d’Ivoire brought a touch of West Africa to his formidable playing in the traditional song Takamba from Mali. He used only two drums – a djembe (left), shaped like a large goblet with added bells on either side, and a calabash, traditionally made from half of a large, dried gourd – but he produced a sound like a rock music drum solo on a complete kit.
Dembele brought not just virtuosity but joy, with frenzied playing at the end of Takamba as the audience clapped along to his complex rhythms with incredible accuracy (Manchester audiences are very sophisticated…) Viola player Ruth Gibson provided a delightful folky, evocative solo above a slow groove. There was joyful virtuosity in other pieces, too. Bass player Alan Keary made his instrument sing in a wonderful solo in Qhawe, going joyfully off-piste as the performers smiled indulgently at him. At the start of Ibuyile L’Africa, he played with a beautifully mellow tone, a melancholy response to the Haydn string quartet movement, with a sound like the fretless bass of the great Jaco Pastorius (there can be no higher praise than that).
In the final piece, Kae Mo Rota, there was more Jaco-style playing from Keary, complete with overtones, as Selaocoe challenged him to play a virtuoso part in response to his short cello notes. Selaocoe explained that the title of the piece meant, ‘Dear friend, I like you very much’, and invited us to say those words to our neighbour. The piece was a stunning ending to the concert, with more astonishing percussion from Dembele, ending with an infectious groove which brought a well-deserved, spontaneous standing ovation. Selaocoe joked that he had nearly gone home at the interval, but in truth his spiritual home is on stage in front of an adoring audience.
After that, there had to be an encore. The band obliged with Ka Bohaleng, Selaocoe inviting the audience to chant the title of the song. He came to the front of the stage, wielding his cello, and Dembele joined him in an ecstatic dance-off. By now the audience were all on their feet, some dancing in the aisles, all of us gleefully clapping along. Selaocoe did his best Freddie Mercury impression, inviting us to match the virtuosity of his singing.
This was a wonderful, life-affirming concert, a reminder of the exhilaration that music can bring. It provided food for the mind, balm for the soul, joy for the feet, and rhythm for the body. Selaocoe was a warm, generous host and the musicians around him shared in his jubilation and virtuosity. An evening to remember for a long time.
Performers
Abel Selaocoe Cello
Rakhi Singh Violin
Simmy Singh Violin
Ruth Gibson Viola
Alan Keary Bass guitar
Sidiki Dembele Percussion
Setlist
Qhawe
Improvisation
Movements from Henry Purcell’s Fairy Queen
Polska from Dorotea (Trad. arr. Danish String Quartet and Manchester Collective)
Lerato
Takamba (Trad. Mali)
March from Benjamin Britten’s Three Divertimenti
Johannes Rusten: O Fredrik, O Fredrik (arr. Danish String Quartet and Manchester Collective)
Hlokomela
Joseph Haydn String Quartet Op. 76 No.1 (Hob.III:75) 2nd movt. Adagio
Ibuyile L’Africa
Kea Mo Rata
Ka Bohaleng
Sources
Eliot, T.S., Four Quartets (Faber and Faber Limited, London, 1944)
MKemoli, Debula and Michelle, Nyasha, How South Africa’s Abel Selaocoe includes throat singing while playing the cello (BBC News Africa 11 January 2024)