Ten years ago on Film Alert, I mentioned Racine Carrée (Square Root), a concert film from the prodigiously talented Paul Van Haver, a Belgian musician who performs under the name Stromae.
At the time, with the notable exceptions of French-speaking territories, he seemed like the music industry’s best kept secret.
His Racine Carrée Tour (2013-2015) stopped at 159 concerts with a total audience of 1,684,360 and a gross of over $US40 million. The Racine Carrée album - his second - sold close to 5 million copies, with 2 million copies sold in France where it remains the third highest selling album in that country.
A Blu-ray release of the Racine Carrée concert (directed by Luc Junior Tam/Gautier & Ledec) was released in 2015.
In that concert, Stromae’s commanding stage presence fronts a joyful, energetic musical fusion of electronic dance music, pop, hip hop, salsa, Congolese samba and jazz, counterpointed by lyrics that touch on missing fathers, material consumption, identity dualities, transgender, mussels, Belgian frites, AIDS, love, peace, violence and cancer.
Not much has changed in the last decade. Outside the French territories, he may still be the music industry’s best kept secret.
But it’s his health that plagues him. The Racine Carrée Tour was cut short in 2015 in Africa, at the birthplace of his father, who was murdered in the Rwandan genocide. Stromae fell ill from anti-malaria medication, and for some years after, experienced insomnia and mentally disturbing hallucinations.
He remained out of the public eye for seven years, but established a fashion and music production business Mosaert (an anagram of Stromae), He continued to produce albums and collaborated with the likes of Lorde, Kanye West, Madonna and Coldplay.
In 2022 he released Multitude, his third album after a nine-year break, and embarked on a mammoth world tour. His health betrayed him once again, and a year into the tour, depression and exhaustion forced him to cancel his final 28 performances.
Stromae subsequently released this professionally produced 4K version of his Multitudeconcert, filmed at numerous concert venues by eleven camera operators. Available free, he saw it specifically as a gift to the fans who had tickets to his cancelled shows.
It’s every bit as impressive as Racine Carrée. His four-piece band and the robotic animations are first rate and his new songs touch on disease; mental sickness; parenting; depression (“It’s my right to sit depressed in my armchair”), sex worker maltreatment by clients, pimps and police; joy; and suicide (“These thoughts putting me through hell”). All delivered with his trademark feel-good electronic house music.
Like AC/DC, his audiences seem to know every word he sings, but unlike Acca Dacca’s fans, his fans know, and ecstatically imitate, Stromae’s energetic dance moves.
For non-Francophiles, it’s hard to fully appreciate his French lyrics, steeped as they are in metaphor, slang, puns and double entendres. But there’s no denying the talent here. In more than 70 years of watching and listening to great emerging musical acts, Stromae ranks with the very best of them.
He may never tour again, making these two state-of-the-art Blu-ray quality concerts invaluable:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.