Concert Review: Adia Victoria Is A Mad Blues Woman At Rough Trade
With her icon being Sylvia Plath, she was plucking her music from The Bell Jar at Rough Trade. Adía Victoria is a Mad Blues Woman, and she doesn’t give a DAMN what you think about it. With her icon being Sylvia Plath, she was plucking her music from The Bell Jar at Rough Trade. For her, music is the sanity and strength of a black woman trying to find her humanity, especially in the blues world of the south.
If you think being a black woman in America is easy, it is not. Being a human being is already hard enough, but when you add the issues of race and gender, you feel like someone has given you a barrel of their issues you didn’t need, considering you already had a personal one of your own. Tracks like, “Heathen,” “Devil Is A Lie,” and “Different Kind of Love” allude to the struggle to own your desires when the world has made you an object to be degraded and desired, but not one that could feel either. In essence, you are felt while being treated as unfeeling. Hence, Adia Victoria uses her arrangements and vocals as her emotions, of which they are powerful, frenetic, and potent. Moreover, they are the very raw emotions of Adia Victoria, the person, as conveyed through Adia Victoria: the artist/alter ego.
There was a moment when Adia said,”Let me break out of character for a minute,” to thank her manager. The instance stood out because it was like having the main protagonist of a play stop the production to say, “You know I’m an actor, right?” Yet, I loved it because it made Adia Victoria, the artist, feel like an audiovisual meant to be unpacked for its symbolism. From how she moves her body to how she slow burns her voice as if she is cooking her notes on low, every part of Adia Victoria’s set is a real act; meant to push and prod how we define blues/humanity and make such definitions accessible to all.
The best part of Adia Victoria’s show is that she has made a high caliber blues and jazz, “big band” available to us: the masses. You don’t have to be a 20th Century bourgeoisie waiting at the Carlyle to see the likes of similar stylized songbirds such as, Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald. Adia Victoria is our present blues queen and she has no qualms singing high notes and the juke bar for those who know good music has no price. For More Information On Adia Victoria Click Here.
