Miami, 17 July 2003 - The “Vive La World” festival was launched in ‘97 by a group of French music enthusiasts living in New York. Starting out as a fixed venue in Central Park, the festival has traveled further afield over the years in the aim of converting the maximum number of North-Americans to Francophone world sounds. This year the 7th “Vive la World” continued its mission with concerts from Duoud, Electro Bamako, So Kalmery and world music diva Natacha Atlas.

Miami Beach was the third stop on this year’s “Vive la World” tour (after Quebec and Montreal). And it was here that the entrancing world music diva Natacha Atlas brought the house down on 12 July, thanking her audience with fervent cries of “Gracias, muchas gracias!” Natacha’s bout of pre-show nerves had proved to be absolutely ill-founded. “I’ve never played in Miami before,” worried Natacha before stepping up on stage, “I performed at the Lincoln Center in New York right after 11 September and the concert went down really well. Besides, I’m sure if there are any xenophobes out there they’re not going to bother turning out for my show when half of my group’s Arab. I think it may be a bit disorienting for people to hear me singing in Arabic, but if the audience possess a shred of what I like to call ‘emotive intelligence’, they’ll get into the music even if they don’t understand the words!”

Joining the “Vive la World” caravan, which sets out every year around 14 July to preach to the unconverted across North America, Natacha was to promote Francophone world sounds in the company of trad/electro double act Duoud, Franco-Malian duo Electro Bamako and Congolese singer and guitarist So Kalmery. Over the years the “Vive la World” festival has drawn an increasingly eclectic crowd and the audience that showed up on Miami Beach included everyone from families, musicians and French embassy officials to hippies sporting Birkenstock sandals and body-pierced youth sporting dreadlocks and tattoos. The crowd gathered in an old-fashioned dance hall, dating back to the good old days of cha cha cha to celebrate the run-up to Bastille Day with a night of music. And while the “Vive la World” line-up 2003 may have been a little patchy in places, there’s no denying the impact Natacha Atlas made on Miami.

From the opening chords of Natacha’s set, waves of interest and pleasant surprise rippled through the audience as they opened their ears to sounds they’d never heard the like of before. The highlight of the set came when Natacha stepped centre stage to perform a haunting London/Egyptian-style improvisation based on Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ R&B classic I Put a Spell On You. Natacha’s version ended up as a sort of spellbinding imprecation, a Shamanic call to the stars which whipped the audience up into a state of exaltation - further heightened when towards the end of the concert (in temperatures of around 30º at midnight) the singer finished things off with a show-stopping display of belly-dancing!

Natacha’s set certainly gave the “Vive la World” concert a boost after a rather shaky start from Congolese singer and guitarist So Kalmery. Kalmery has obviously not mastered the first rules of keeping an audience’s interest yet, his songs sounding interminably long and his frequent cries of “Are you feeling the heat, Miami?” producing nothing more than a soporific effect. Electro Bamako (a double act made up of Malian diva Mamami Keita and French musician Marc Minnelli) put on a much more energising show. And DuOud (aka Franco-Tunisian musician Jean-Pierre Smadja and Franco-Algerian maestro Mehdi Haddab) proved a big hit with the crowd, kicking off their set by sampling Barry White, who had died just a few days earlier. Following this nifty gimmick, the pair proceeded to sing through voice-distorting mikes processed through a computer - which was rather a shame as the most interesting feature of the duo’s act is their modern reworking of music played on traditional instruments such as the ‘ud (Arab lute). Admittedly, though, Smadja and Haddab’s catchy techno version of the theme from Midnight Express ended up working the crowd into a trance nevertheless.

Once again “Vive La World” appeared to have fulfilled its mission of introducing American audiences to happening Francophone world sounds. With her haunting vocals, swirling belly-dancing and stunning stage costumes (hand-made by her mother!), Natacha Atlas was the clear winner on the clap-ometer this year. “Vive la World” proved something of a triumph too, however. After enjoying a series of major ups and downs, this original music festival continues to fight for its existence year after year aided by much-needed support from French cultural centres, the Alliance Française and organisations such as The Rhythm Foundation in Miami. This American tour organiser, specialised in Francophone world music, has already been responsible for taking electro/tango outfit Gotan Project out to the States. And in September The Rhythm Foundation will be taking Jane Birkin out to Florida to perform Arabic covers of her former lover Serge Gainsbourg’s work. Thanks to musical initiatives such as these, France and the U.S. have maintained a solid network of musical exchange despite a recent cooling in diplomatic relations.

Clotilde Luce

Next stops : Washington DC, July 17th & 18th (Kennedy Center), Chicago July 19th (Hothouse) and New York July 20th (Central Park Summerstage).