If you haven’t heard of 29-year-old Paul Van Haver, who inverted the word “maestro” to create “Stromae”, then you need to play catch-up. When he came on stage and asked for a cheer from the English speakers in the audience, there was an audible one, but when he asked the same of the French speakers, there was a veritable roar. All parties knew his work though, and all knew the words to his songs, which are in French.
He has admitted in interviews that when he writes his songs, he frequently visualises the accompanying video, and these videos subsequently influence his stage performance. For Formidable [Wonderful], he staggers around the stage in a feigned drunken stupor, before collapsing near the end of the song and being pulled to his feet by a member of his band. For Tous les Mêmes [They Are All The Same], he sits on stage and prepares the right-hand side of his face with make-up and inserts a single earring to flick between male and female personas depending on which way he’s facing as he sings. For Papaoutei [Papa, Where Are You?], he changes into the same clothes he wears in the video and adapts the pose of a mannequin crossed with a Ken doll.
Mix in some dazzling lights, geometric projections, animations, and the fact that this slender six-footer dances like a cross between the tango dancer of your dreams and Michael Jackson inThriller, and you have a captivating performance.
Stromae played the hits from his current album Racine Carrée [Square Root] as well as those from his debut Cheese. His music is dance, that mixes in hip hop, Congolese influences and a voice that can go deep, reflecting his Rwandan heritage (his father was Rwandan, his mother is Belgian), but can also channel an Édith Piaf vibe in songs like AVF [which stands for AllezVous Faire – slang for ‘fuck you’]. The highlight of the night was his performance of Carmen. The song samples Habanera, from Bizet’s opera Carmen. Ahead of the song, we saw an animation showing Stromae in a factory-style production line getting changed. When he reappeared on stage, which had now been sheathed in floor to ceiling drapes, he was all in grey, wearing shorts, knee-high socks, a blazer and a bowling hat, carrying a shortened microphone stick a la Freddie Mercury, which he twirled like a walking cane. Digital replicas of him appeared on the curtains, and he danced in sync with them, going from swaggering steps to crab-like manoeuvres.
The other highlight was the thank you’s. While it is not uncommon for an artist to thank the musicians on stage and call out their names, we don’t think we’ve ever heard a performer thank his crew individually, from the animators to the sound technicians, the people doing the lighting rig to his management team. He’s a jolly nice chap is Stromae.
Credits
Text Holly Howe