The colored keys sound by themselves. The grand piano, made of transparent PVC material, indicates that there is a small secondary stage, placed in the middle of the audience, where the public awaits the entrance of Arcade Fire to the sound of a modinha played on the piano in vaudeville. The instrument is illuminated by white light, and above it is a large mirror ball, still in shadow. The galleries and stands of the Praça de Toros do Campo Pequeno, in Lisbon, are also made up.
Before that, Haitians Boukman Eksperyans played, who replaced Feist after he parted ways with the Canadian band due to allegations of sexual abuse against singer Win Butler, which came to light in early September. The Boukman Eksperyans took their name both from the voodoo priest Dutty Boukman, considered the catalyst for the slave revolt that marked the beginning of the revolution and the territory’s independence from the French, and from the word “experience” pronounced in Creole. And this is important because, at the end of the Arcade Fire concert, elements of the Boukman Eksperyans get together and participate in the song “Haiti”, from the first album –brilliant, new– by the Canadian band Funeral. Vocalist Theodore Lolo Beaubrun will even brandish the Haitian flag. The country marks, in its origin, the beginning of the black revolts and affirmation worldwide.
Next to the mouth of the main stage is a small black box, part of the technical paraphernalia, which has “WE” written in white, as if it were an act of graphic art improvised by an amateur band taking its first steps in the representations. in the live US is the name of Arcade Fire’s latest album, which we have already talked about here at Observador, being an album that marks the band’s return to being themselves on their way to the new. And this could very much define the work of Arcade Fire: it can talk about the most serious topics, the most depressing topics -and there are many- but the cure, or at least the survival, is in the way of walking. And the way you walk is the path to catharsis.
Catharsis has a lot to say in this concert. We are facing an audience that knows the band’s formula and is already ecstatic, even before the concert begins, like a drug addict waiting for the long-awaited dose of it. The show can’t go wrong, the audience will jump up and keep their arms pointing towards the stage and sing all the choruses. Not even the sound, which was not particularly good (bass was sometimes too distorted), could disturb.
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Source: Observadora
