Live Review and Photo by: Mary Grace McKernan
Goapele took the stage at the El Rey in Los Angeles and for the next seventy-five minutes gave a spectacular high energy performance where she managed to make everyone in the audience feel like she was their just for them. Goapele is honestly a performer in a class all of her own.
Goapele’s sound is at one moment R&B and then Funk and then Jazz and then Pop and then right back to Blues. She can be cool and heartbreaking and her music and lyrics have a Billie Holiday feel. Her music is like a painting where you can see the influences of the Dutch Masters, the Impressionists, the Surrealists all at once. And just when you feel that you have figured it out — she’ll bring the house down with a Motown influenced song. What Goapele does so well, is that she takes these iconic sounds and weaves them together to form something so beautiful it’s hard to describe in words. It’s one thing to do this on an album but quite another to do it in a live performance. Goapele does it — and does it perfectly.
Goapele’s set consisted of songs mainly from her recently released album, “Breaking Dawn”. But one of the highlights of the show is when she sang “Running” from the movie “Sparkle”. This is a catchy pop Motown influenced song and the audience was clapping a long with Goapele’s back up singers.
For an encore, Goapele sang a cappella, the infamous Etta James song, “At Last”. With just a single spotlight on her she managed to quiet the charged-up audience and for a few minutes there was no typical concert chatter and the only voice you could hear in the venue was Goapele’s. It was an ethereal live performance and one can only think that this is someone who is bound for big stadium performances. Goapele is a performer who manages to makes it look so easy. She is graceful and confident and her gratefulness towards her fans is evident the moment she takes the stage – how blessed are we that we got to see her at the El Rey.
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