Oliver Barrett reviews Dobet Gnahor�’s debut tour of the UK at Shoreditch’s RixMix Cultural Centre.

Appearing alone on stage to an eerie bird call created by her voice fused with an African flute, dressed in vibrant orange African print, locks bunched high on her head and face marked with silver and black lines spanning away from her eyes, forehead and chin, Dobet Gnahor� announces her arrival. An intimate audience of approximately sixty people in Shoreditch’s RixMix cultural centre are about to experience the phenomenon that has been hailed as African music’s rising star. After a two hour set of vocal dexterity, electric dance and irresistible charm the term rising star should simply be replaced with star.

To pinpoint the Gnahor� experience would be to try and root her to one spot on the stage - impossible. Although her sound is classed as a pan-African this does little to serve the diversity of her material. Her music has flavours of Mandingue melodies, Congolese rumba, Ivorian Ziglibiti, Cameroonian Bikoutsi, Ghanian High-Life, Zulu choirs, jazz and reggae all of which seamlessly intertwine with lyrics composed in over seven languages. Complement this with her rich and varied vocals, her ability to embody her music through theatre and dance and her skills with a range of percussion and props, what Gnahor� offers is much more than song, she offers a performance in the truest sense of the word. The sound, movement and raw emotion she displayed through her songs about motherhood, childhood, AIDS/HIV, civil war and as she would say ‘La belle Vie’, kept the audience hanging on her every smile, high kick or chord. Whilst playing the fifth and most uplifting song in her 15 track performance,’ Yekiyi’, the joy in her dance and voice were so apparent that the crowd could have been mistaken for an audience watching a comic rather than a musician, so broad were their smiles. Such is her presence that when she began the song called ‘Loubou’ or ‘Mourning’ under a solitary spotlight in a capella, the smiles vanished and a once playful audience became absorbed by her aching vocals. Throughout her set, which featured a rapturous encore, there was a true connection of emotions between Gnahor� and her listeners which transcended music.

Born in 1982 at the renowned Ki-Yi M’Bock artistic cooperative; a pastoral neighbourhood near to the Ivory Coast’s capital city of Abidjan founded by the Cameroonian Werewere Liking in 1985 as a place where artists of diverse traditions and talents could gather and grow, it was inevitable that her approach to music would be unique.

At the age of 12 she told her father Boni, a founding member of the Ki-Yi that she was quitting school to pursue a career in the arts and has never looked back. Her horizons broaden when in 1996 a French guitarist, Colin Laroche de F�line joined the cooperative eager to master African techniques. Sharing their passion for music they fell in love and soon married only to flee to Marseilles, France when civil war erupted in 1999.

From their new home they have produced a string of hit albums; Ano Neko, which means ‘Let’s create together’ in the Bete language in 2004, ‘Na Afriki’ or ‘To Africa’ in 2007 and ‘Djekpa La You’ earlier this year. Her efforts have received widespread critical acclaim and she was nominated for the BBC’s Award for World Music’s Best Newcomer in 2006 and won the 2010 Grammy for Best Urban/Alternative Performance for the song ‘Pearls’, a duet with India Aire.

Gnahor� is a visual and audio experience that should not be missed. Having listened to her albums away from the vibrancy of her stage presence I am forced to wonder whether some of her tracks have the strength to stand alone at such great heights, but that is perhaps more a testament to her performance rather than a critique of her music. Although this was her first UK tour, after rave reviews and an outstanding performance at this year’s WOMAD festival expect to see her here again very soon. I strongly urge you to make space in your calendar.