With
that, Pierce took command of the room.
I’m probably underestimating that Los Angeles singer-songwriter Chris Pierce stands 6’4”, but what matters is
the way Pierce’s black-suited, white hatted frame seemed almost to crouch to fit
in the stage area by the hotel window. Moving through one pointed confrontation
with injustice after another, from “American Silence”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80dpcoV5eVU (“It’s a crime!”) to the hard
therapy of “Ring Them Bells” (“Shame it, face it, damn it to hell!”), to his
contemplation of the concept of freedom in a world where the poor person
stealing for her survival faces prison while the employer stealing wages faces
no repercussions, only rewards, “Chain Gang Fourth of July,”
Pierce’s part
blues, part gospel shout insisted everyone in the room and half the hall that
extended beyond us face the lies that tear us apart and keep thinking on them until we
find a way forward. As Pierce puts it in “Silence,” “we sing through the pain
and keep on marching on.”
Any attempt to describe Pierce’s sound falls short. He
has a beautiful, soulful voice that can soar, like Sam Cooke, beyond all
imaginable boundaries. At the same time, on songs like “It’s Been Burning for a
While” and “Static Trampoline,” he can run that voice through urgent jazz
figures to pick this stubborn lock that keeps us where we are
rather than where we are being called to be.
On “Trampoline,” a song about the
loss of his father, he turns that improvisation into proof that he will find a way,
pouring his desperation into fevered harmonica explosions before pushing that voice
as hard as he can. For Chris Pierce, music isn’t simply magic from the ether
(oh, that’s there, in a big way) but more importantly it's hard work and
fierce determination.
Pierce ended his set with “How Can Anybody Be Okay with
This?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMjhNFDf-JM, a song that begins “I’m sick
and tired of this song/we’ve been singing it too long/singing ‘we shall overcome
someday.’”
He said that he planned to read the names of the ten people killed in
that Buffalo supermarket last weekend, but he didn't have it, so resolved, “I’ll do it tomorrow,” before
beginning the simmering build, asking why we stay in this holding pattern,
society corroding from the wear, his voice a desperate effort to maintain hope,
his melody a leap of faith that resonated throughout the rest of the evening.
My
friend Mike Warren and I carried Pierce’s resonating vision with us to the
Mundial Montreal room, where artists from Quebec built upon it. With a trio our
host compared to Crosby, Stills & Nash, and songs that called to mind virtually
every seasoned impulse of early 70s folk rock with its warm melodies and
harmonies, David Lafleche started that part of our evening in an assured, inviting way.
Lafleche’s debut single “We Collided”
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs7ksHskKpc9vQo42uXIJLw
And the musicians who
followed fleshed out the idea of music as a tool to fight for the world we can
envision when we sing and play together.
Colombian Ramon Chicharron’s four-piece blended sounds
from South America with the Caribbean, even a touch of West African Highlife
slipping in and out on the guitar. It perfectly suited Chicharron’s sound when
he talked of a world without borders, “like the one all the other species we
share this world with live in.” Then, he introduced “Pescador,” a song about a South American culture where fishing is done daily because, “why keep more
fish than you need? The ocean is the refrigerator!" Ramon Chicharron,
“Pescador”--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgeMM8rfv_s&list=PLqpvhIJmoG_ZJIZjdz9BBwwuJyBLaL8NS&index=7
Things became tender with a performance by Montreal’s Genevieve
Racette and her brilliant three piece. Songs like “Someone” and “Maybe” were
lump-to-the-throat direct and evocative. Genevieve Racette, “Someone”—
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNk1pD3fHGY
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