At Trans Musicales, groove and grace

A form of ecstasy sometimes seemed to hover this Saturday evening over the Trans Musicales. After a first night dominated by

mutant rhythmsthen

magnetic vibrations who embraced the concerts the next day, the spirits of music seemed to have been summoned to the Parc des expositions in Rennes to offer several scheduled formations a kind of extra soul. Perhaps the Trans are never as beautiful as when they give reason to their baptismal name, yesterday more than once blowing a mystical breeze over these vast halls which were once again full.

Shaped like a brand prelude, it’s the singer Grace Cummings who opened the ball with his dark and intense alternative folk. The Australian, alternating guitar and keyboard, petrified the audience in Hall 03 with her deep and striking voice, a sensitive chord coupled with a penetrating rock assurance. Navigating between songs that evoke great standards of the genre, also taking up for the occasion the I’m Lonely (but I Ain’t That Lonely Yet) soon to be twenty years old of the White Stripes, the native of Victoria raised the tension and the emotion as much as she seemed to reveal on stage all the beauty of her fragilities.

On the same stage a little later, an improbable tandem sat on two simple chairs facing the audience. The Estonians Ramo Teder and Marko Veisson came to present their duo there PUULUPa duo in the form of an instrumental UFO based on the acute mastery of their traditional bowed hurdy-gurdies, the talharpa.

Relying on electronic arrangements and vocal loops recorded live, dedicating a song to cross-country skiing, these two mad scientists clashed especially when Ramo Teder, over the impromptu flashes, split the armor to improvise MC of another era and which sometimes recalled by its touch of madness the brilliant Finnish accordionist Antti Paalanen seen in the same place last year.

Watched like milk on fire this Saturday evening, the “Black Indians” sensations of the 79rs Gang finally took over the neighboring Hall 08 shortly before midnight. Originally from New Orleans, this formation which draws on the carnival traditions of the city of Louis Armstrong is enriched above all by the Native American tradition brought by its two founding members Big Chief Jermaine and Big Chief Romeo. On stage, this colorful octet turned into a very well-oiled groove machine, igniting an audience thrilled with their powerful vocals and hip-hop, funk and Caribbean rhythms masterfully rolled out by a guitarist / percussionist pair of high stolen.

Other spirits still hovered over Hall 03 when the intriguing quartet Mouvman Ale appeared there in the dead of night. Originally from the island of Reunion, his disciples have gradually created an experimental island trance between rock influences and traditional music. A kind of fusion of guitars and percussion carried in particular by the bodily and sometimes mystical energy of their leader (guru?) Franswa Virassamy-Macé.

Later still, they are the three singer-priestesses of the Nana Benz from Togo who won over an audience that at the end of the night was just waiting for them. With its two backs playing on instruments made from recycled plastic and metal objects (big up to the suitcase transformed into a bass drum), the quintet hit the mark with its urban voodoo and contagious funky trance, inviting the time of a splendid title their mentor Peter Solo from Voodoo Game.