As children, we danced the Mia. As teenagers, we attended the École du micro d’argent. It was therefore logical that as adults, we had a full house at the Maison symphonique on Tuesday evening for the first of four concerts by the French rap collective IAM with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.
First scheduled for April 2020, the highly anticipated musical alliance was postponed three times due to the pandemic – and the refusal of some artists to be vaccinated. The wait was worth it, because the marriage between the worlds of the Marseille group and the musicians led by conductor Dina Gilbert is a happy one. The 1900 witnesses to this union were obviously won over, spending most of the evening on their feet singing and dancing.
From the start, the crowd showed its enthusiasm by warmly applauding the message announcing the evening’s program and the safety instructions, which was recited to a more cheerful rhythm than usual. Spectators then screamed the chorus of Fire, and did it again a few times, remaining the only performers of the 1993 piece, which was not part of the menu.
This show was more of a celebration of IAM’s great classic, L’École du micro d’argent, published in 1997. The title piece opened the ball, followed by Borns under the same star, which delighted the audience. crowd. As the songs went on, nothing seemed to be able to undermine this joy, but it became more and more clear that this was, above all, a rap show.
Certainly, we could discern greater depth and more textures, but orchestrator Blair Thomson’s brilliant arrangements were mostly drowned out by overly loud percussion and overbearing mics. At times, if you closed your eyes, you might have thought you were listening to the record in an excellent stereo system.
Chez le mac was preceded by a very welcome orchestral jazz sequence. The musicians were also able to showcase their virtuosity in the introduction to Un bon son brut pour les truands. We would have had many more moments like these.
Like the day before at the Wu-Tang Clan and Nas show, we witnessed a performance by rappers in their fifties at the top of their art. Akhenaten and Shurik’n delivered each of their rhymes with total mastery.
Their complicity on She gives her body before her name – still much loved despite her words –, their contagious choreography during Je danse le Mia and especially their frantic flow during the nine minutes of Demain, c’est loin amazed everyone gathered on Tuesday evening .
Little Brother and The Empire of the Dark Side were unsurprisingly two highlights of the show, but let’s also remember the zen instrumental break that followed When you were going, we were coming back and the solo pieces My text, the soap (Akhenaton) and Mines (Shurik’n). Stripped down, these gave more space to the musicians.
The collaboration between IAM and the OSM is a great success, but we believe that a more orchestral reconstruction of The School of the Silver Microphone would have been as appreciated by the fans who grew up with the work and who were ready to rediscover it in a place as beautiful as it is unexpected.