A Time for Healing: Nao's Gift for Community
The time is Nao
As many of your will know, in my monthly feature in the Brussels Times, I preview the most interesting gigs in Brussels and surrounding area in the month ahead. I thought I would so something different after seeing a fantastic concert on Wednesday. Thanks to the wonderful Substack platform, I can share this with you without needing to go to the Brussels Times.
The show that motivated me to write my first gig review in more than 30 years was the concert by UK neo-soul and R’n’B singer, Nao. She calls her music “wonky funk”. It’s a good description as she delays the accent in the bar until late for dramatic effect, as in “Firefly”.
Nao, who is 37, has just released her fourth studio album, “Jupiter”, and she performed half of the tracks from it on Wednesday as well as her most popular songs going back to 2016.
Entering La Madeleine on Wednesday, I knew instantly that this show would “hit different”. The crowd was younger, more mixed race and more female than the audiences I see at gigs at Ancienne Belgique or Botanique.
La Madeleine, on a street just up from the Grand’Place or just down from Gare Centrale, has established itself as the Brussels venue for soul, funk, R&B, hip-hop and dance artists. It holds around 1,400 people and has this amazing double staircase that comes down on both sides of the stage and can be used for proper “Diva-style” entrances.
The stage was decorated with a giant glowing globe in front of which hung what looked like a white adult-sized christening robe. In front of that were a row of artificial bulrushes decorated with red flowers.
When Nao came on stage, the young crowd roared with excitement and acknowledgement of Nao’s talent: her incredible vocal range and control, her songwriting ability and her warm, open personality that allows her to instantly form a bond with her audience.
Nao is relatively short, probably no more than 5’ 3’ (162 cm) but what she lacks in physical stature, she more than makes up for with stage presence. These days, she wears her hair in braids rather than loose. But she still does her trademark movement of swinging her head round slowly to show off her mane. It looked even more impressive a few years ago when she did it before she got her braids but it’s still quite a statement of pride by a young black woman.
The reason why I wanted to write this, my first review, in nearly thirty years (gulp), is because of the powerful sense of community at the gig. I know this sounds cheesy, and even more so from a middle-aged white man, but the force was strong with this one. Even before Nao got into her set, the love coming from the crowd and especially groups of young black women was striking and special.
I wasn’t taking notes on which songs she played but they included “Happy People” and “Jupiter” from the new album. Early in the set, she sang “Elevate” from the LP and before starting the track, she asked the crowd to sing along. Now, some of you might be rolling your eyes at this standard crowd-pleasing trick, especially when soul or R&B artists play live. But this was Nao and her crowd and they cut different. One group in the audience had already started singing the chorus before the singer started dividing the crowd into different sections to sing different notes. Nao had noticed this and told the group that they were clearly “special”. When she turned towards them for their part of the singalong, they knew which note of the three-party harmony she wanted them to sing. They sang it but then added an additional, higher note. I guess it was the ninth.
That was one moment of community. I was thinking about what that group of fans must feel to have sung like that for their heroine and to have her show you so much love and respect back. Community. In a small space and only for a limited time, but nevertheless.
Throughout the gig, Nao wowed the crowd with her amazing voice which ranges from a high, almost little-girl-like register to nearly a baritone. I’m guessing her range is three octaves, or the best part of it.
Her stage band were a guitarist who played in the style of the immaculately produced 80s neo-soul albums and a bass player who used a Moog (Sub Phatty I would guess) as well as her guitar. At the back were her keyboard player and drummer.
The sense of community came to the fore again when she introduced her band, saying that they were musicians she had known for a long time. Nao said her relationship with her bass player, whose name I missed, went back to university. The keyboard player was also her musical director, she said. The only (relatively) new member was her drummer, who I think was playing with Nao for the first time on this tour.
She talked a lot during the set about the inspiration for her album and the idea from astrology of when “Jupiter returns” (i.e. to your birth year) and which marks a time of growth and development. She talked about her bout of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which left her bedridden and unable to tour for about five years. Incredibly, around the same time, she became a mother. Then, she played “Thirty Something”, a track from “Jupiter”, accompanied on acoustic guitar. The lyrics are about the changes in her life after her illness and the birth of her daughter.
“And I wake up and I come to and I realize what I'm next to/
Dishes in the kitchen, yeah, my sleep ain′t getting better/
And I love my baby daughter, sometimes motherhood is whatever/
And I swear I wouldn′t change this for the soft life or the lie-ins/
For Sundays watching cartoons.”
This middle-aged man had to work hard to keep in the tears. I’ve been going through a tough time emotionally in last couple of months and Nao’s performance of this song brought everything to the surface, in a wonderfully moving way.
I could go through many more highlights of the show but this piece is already long.
Nao first came to my attention when she was guest vocalist on a track called “Firefly” she recorded with electronic musician Mura Masa back in 2017. I saw her at Barcelona’s Primavera festival in 2016 and then again at Botanique in November that year. They were both great gigs and she did her trademark head roll. Ten years later, Nao has come through the trials and traumas of her young life to grow into one of the greatest soul and R&B performers out there.
Come back soon, Ms Nao, because next time I want to be in the front row with my homies
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