Live
ASA: Islington Academy 12/05/08
Discovering Asa live for the first time, is like picking an unusual sweet or candy you find wrapped up in exciting looking packaging hidden inside at the back of an exotic looking box.
It already looks intriguing but when you take off the wrapping and take a little bite, the taste is exquisitely spine tingling. Hailing from a Nigerian family, Asa is already carving out a name for herself as a popular artist in France. However, being relatively little known in the UK, added intriguing, mysterious and exotic elements into the mix for this much anticipated performance at Islington Academy.
Prior to her arrival, a two minute intro from the band, mellow but deeply funky gave no real clue as to the taste of the show to come. However, the band visibly tensed with anticipation as Asa made a matter of fact entry like onto the stage. Dressed in a white short sleeve shirt, black trousers and sporting dreads and some serious intellectual looking glasses she would not have looked out of place on University Challenge. Armed with acoustic guitar she launched into her first number – the very Marley-esque '360◦' and the crowd went into raptures. When she shouted out “Are there any Nigerians in here tonight”, it was evident from the number of hands going up in the air and the vociferous response that half the Nigerian community of North London had turned out for the gig. This was indeed a partisan crowd fully intent on enjoying themselves and this made for an electric atmosphere.
Songs from Asa’s self titled debut album have great choruses that lent themselves well to whole scale audience sing-alongs and this was certainly the case with sweetly melodic 'Bi Ban Ke' and the spiritual 'Fire on the Mountain'. Perhaps because of the highly charged positive atmosphere, Asa did at times struggle to quieten down the crowd enough to get them to listen to her softer ballads such as 'Awe' and stopped a couple of times mid-song to playfully chastise the audience and win back the initiative. This problem, of course, disappeared at the return of more up-tempo numbers like the infectiously danceable 'Jailer' with its soft reggae beat and the dreamily reflective 'No One Knows'. The three song encore section brought an awesome version of Nina Simone’s 'Feeling Good' that will live long in the memory and of which Nina herself would have been proud as well as reprises of 'Fire on the Mountain' that morphed into 'Jailer' at the end.
Asa has been compared with Bob Marley from certain quarters and while there were certainly influences of his music to be heard particularly in '360◦', 'Fire on the Mountain' and 'Jailer', other tracks like 'Bi Ban Ke' and 'No One Knows' reveal other influences such as Aretha Franklin, Lauryn Hill and even Des’ree.
The depth of the reflective and thought provoking lyrics added some gravitas to the show commenting on moral social and political matters but this was more than balanced by the celebratory mood in the audience. Asa may not be Bob Marley but there is no doubt that her performance would have made him smile. She now embarks on a lengthy world tour but hopefully will back in the UK soon to further raise her profile.
Words DARREN LEWIS
