Mian Tiara, wasn't expected to see her when i decided to go Nynke Laverman show, but when i read her name on the poster, i thought oh, it's a nice bonus cause i've never listened to her live. As an indie singer who often carries the label as a "jazz" singer, i actually kinda hoped she sang at least one song that wasn't from her recorded album, but she didn't. At some points she looked nervous and one time she said things about how they got invited there by some certain connections which i think wasn't really necessary for audience to know. She did sing this song, but i like the recorded version much better, simple and without gimmick or long instrument solo whatsoever. I like the video version best actually, talking about the power of visual presentation. But overall she was mesmerizing. Her performance did evoke certain kind of emotion inside of you. But that, wasn't until..the performance of Nynke Laverman herself.
She sang mostly in Frisian, a language spoken in Friesland, a Dutch province, and also in English, Portuguese, and Spanish. Luckily, she kindly explained before each song the title and the story behind the song, which, I think has made the whole performance so well absorbed.
Three songs in particular sticks in my head. Snow In August. My impression to her voice singing this had nothing to do with the title, but it made me imagined this lady being raised in a meadow having close relationship with the nature. The second one i forgot the title but she spoke about how hard it is trying to translate the emotions she felt every time she got back from different kind of places around the world. She described her feeling when she was in Mongolia: her shadows are longer, her ribs are tighter, and her eyes are deeper. I think it was simply beautiful. And the third one was a song about a murder, where it is the victim who sings. She said the murderer grabbed her hair and drown her head into the water. Then she began to sing as the woman being under the water. She could see her hair floats. Little fishes had gone inside her head. Stones are piled in her chest. She couldn't breathe. How brilliant.
Oh, and she did a cover of Radiohead song, No Surprises, which was a surprise to the audience. And she sang Leonard Cohen's famous Hallelujah song as her encore, which was divine.
I started to think how geography influences the sense of a person to create. At first I thought it was the four different seasons they have, but then I remember Boi Akih and the out of body experience during their show performing songs they created in Moluccas. So it has to be land. Laverman in the meadow of Friesland. Like Sigur Rós and Ólafur Arnalds in Iceland. The ethereal poetic imagination you can only sense in your personal encounter with the nature. Compares to those living in the city, who rely only on human to human interactions to evoke certain kind of emotions, no wonder most songs coming out of it speak about erotic love or romance. Or anger or sometimes politics.
ps. this kind of "intellectual" artistic performance always works as the best "detox" for me, it calms the anger, the sadness and the regret of me being me, while at the same time raises up the conflict inside of me losing the reasons of why i wanna be "fixed" and why i was searching for "help".
