Deva Mahal is a top Soul diva and dominates with her presence at boutique venue Big Fan.
A short three date Future Classic Tour, culminating on a Saturday night celebratory party in Auckland.
I have seen her at the Ponsonby Social Club during the midst of the lockdown madness in 2021, when people feared breathing near one another.
She easily dominated the big Brookland Oval stage in 2023’s WOMAD, when she was bracketed with the Fantastic Negrito, on the Sunday afternoon crowd.
Her Future Classics Vol. One show, at the Tuning Fork in 2023 easily lifted the roof of the mother…
Tonight, she has an essential engine room of bass and drums behind her (names I did not catch) with a few judicious R’n’B licks and Funk effects on guitar.
Her voice is a little muted in the mix but does improve as the show progresses. The fire is a slow burn initially tonight.
Of course she is the daughter of Henry Fredericks Taj Mahal. A favourite of some of us Boomers here, in the early Eighties when we would catch his shows at the old Mainstreet on Queen St, long gone now.
Both Deva and her sister Zoe Moon attended the last Grammy awards in February of this year, when Taj won his fifth gong, for Best Traditional Blues Album.
I sense there may be a Staple Singers dynamic going on here in the not-too-distant future.
Mahal was brought up in Hawaii but has been domiciled in New Zealand at the age of 17, before splitting between here and New York City.
Starts with the brand-new music. South Coast has a dominant bass throb, and the vocals compete with the engine room. Eventually she gets there with powerful gospel tones.
Need is a sexy come on song with heat and passion. Just wanna feel you inside.
Sometimes Good is the third brand-new one this evening and feature effervescent ringing guitar effects.
Snakes, off Run Deep (2018) and Run Me Through are good early Seventies post-Motown Soul numbers but her voice needs to be higher in the mix.
It comes right spectacularly with March, an older song from her time with Electric Wire Hustle. A slower tempo which smoulders and glows, with a bass vibrating through the viscera.
Goddam may have some connection to the Nina Simone signature classic. Mahal explains that the back story is related to cuttlefish behaviour and the nature docs of David Attenborough.
Don’t stand so close to me/ Goddamn why you talkin’ to me. Swinging and sassy R’n’B style.
A radically reworked version of Sly and the Family Stone’s Everyday People. Jazz on the vocal approach and it has ominous tones. The approach is enervated in the same fashion as There’s a Riot Goin’ On was lumbering under the weight of Martin Luther King assassination, Vietnam war and Black America burning.
Difficult times come around again, and tensions are high. America is waiting for a message of some sort or another (My Life in The Bush of Ghosts).
Militant Black sounds with harder-edged Soul music capped by a decent drum solo.
Brings the Soul Train party back to close the evening with Stand In, co-written by Marika Hodgson, where Mahal comes back big and dynamic like Lady Soul Aretha.
Matched with Worthy, one of the standout tracks from Future Classic: Vol1. Great rhythmic drive which dances and swings, and Deva Mahal takes the evening out in triumph.
Rev. Orange Peel
