Saturday, August 30, 2008

Edinburgh Reviews: Soweto Gospel Quoir

I'm not much of a choral music person, or a Gospel person, so I'm probably not the ideal audience for this kind of show. It's pretty amazing, but I had a few niggles that stopped me from really loving every minute in the same way that most of my friends who saw it did:

1. I don't like listening to people sing in a language I don't understand; they might be singing "burn the gays in the name of the spaghetti monster" for all I know.
2. The sound design was trying too hard - voices this good don't need smothering in that much reverb.

Still, the show is commendable in many ways, and really worth the time of even someone like me for whom it is not an obvious choice. A conscious effort has been made to break up the hour long slot, with a run of "oddball" songs and bits of dance in the middle of the show, and the enthusiasm of every single performer on the stage is infectious.

4/5

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