Tutu Puoane, Ewout Pierreux, Brice Soniano, James Williams
(Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. 30 May 2024. Review by Tom Step)

Tutu Puoane’s UK debut as leader at Ronnie Scott’s was a masterclass in improvisation, and also in how to relate to an audience. It was a rainy Thursday afternoon outside, but the South African singer shone like a bright sun (she was in the club last year as part of the “Black Lives from Generation to Generation” band – reviewed here).

Puoane was performing music from her album Wrapped in Rhythm Vol 1, settings of texts from Lebogang Mashile’s poetry collection In a Ribbon of Rhythm. Now based in Belgium, Puoane says she has carried this book like a little piece of her country in her back pocket for the last ten years. She described how she heard music every time she read it. “It did things to my soul,” she said at the start of her performance.

This music is clearly all about the lyrics, and there was a fantastic awareness of this from the band. Accompanying Puoane’s celestial voice was Ewout Pierreux on piano, Puoane’s husband and long term collaborator. Together they co-wrote the majority of the songs on the album, and his playing left nothing to be desired. Together Pierreux, Brice Soniano (bass) and James Williams (drums) comped each song with an attention to the delicate subtlety and fragility of the words. The grooves were occasionally enhanced by Puoane’s use of a kayamb, a large rectangular shaker associated with Reunion Island’s Maloya tradition.

Puoane’s improvisational skills as vocalist are phenomenal. On the album it is the solos from instrumentalists like Tim Finoulst (guitar, pedal steel) and Bert Joris (trumpet) which feature strongest, and the voice is reserved to the role of expressing the power and depth of Mashile’s poetry. But live, this is different: in ‘Dawn’, written by Pierreux, it was the band’s superb capacity to support with an intimate groove which allowed to Puoane to weave real magic. She came into the fray with a melodic whistling solo with the natural ease of a songbird, which grew, her voice transitioning and strengthening to bring things to an unforgettable climax.

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This turned out to be a gentle introduction into Puoane’s expansive, creative approach to the voice. Her vocal improvisations were varied with trumpet sounds, tribal calls and oscillations across her vocal break which was received with excited appreciation by the audience. She also has a fascinating vocal armoury of percussive breathing, and the clicks from the Xhosa language which her grandmother taught her (Puoane’s own language is Tshwane).

Puoane evidently thrives in the spotlight. With a plethora of relevant stories and funny anecdotes, she opened up a conversation with the reserved crowd, and in doing so, we were invited into her life, her world and so, her music. Someone was moved to mention their friend’s birthday the following day which happened to coincide with Puoane’s. Suddenly, the whole club was desperate to tell her e.g. that it was their sister’s husband’s cousin’s birthday next week, and so an impromptu rendition of ‘Happy Birthday to Everyone’ followed. It occurred to me that a truly brilliant performer doesn’t just say “look at me,” but “look at yourselves” and “look at everyone around you.” Suddenly we were all there on equal terms, and Puoane was just another one of us with a birthday. This idea made especially poignant the gravity of the topic of her music: South Africa – her country’s turbulent past and present, captured and communicated through the moving text of Mashile.

It was fitting that the whole of the club then joined together in call and response for the encore ‘From The Outside In’. This made for a memorable end to fantastic evening – it felt as though the sun was shining in on that lamplit Soho cellar as Puoane sung ‘With my own friends’, and her new friends sung it back to her.

LINK:

Tutu Puoane’s website