John Fordham 

Bobby McFerrin

Barbican, London
  
  


Bobby McFerrin can sound like everything from a church countertenor to a bop saxophonist to an entire funk band, with nothing more than his limbs, his vocal cords and a microphone. But while he can do it all on his own, he loves sharing the communal pleasure of music-making every chance he gets, with professionals, amateurs, random audience members - anybody who is prepared to give it a go with him.

He began alone, with a high, alto sax-like bebop melody against a drum pulse beaten on his chest, which mutated into yodelling skids between a bassline and a falsetto. Then came a didgeridoo sound under a tribal chant, and a startling replica of an electric blues band - the lyrics a collage of abstract sounds but with the occasional fragment of a blues song thrown in.

The Sardinian singer and saxophonist Gavino Murgia then joined McFerrin to play free-jazz on soprano sax, a dialogue with the singer's pulsating low warble, which culminated in a reverberating throat-singing climax. After getting the audience to sing Ave Maria with him, he improvised on Charlie Parker and One Note Samba with pianist Gwilym Simcock before bringing the house down with a thundering hip-hop exchange with his human-beatboxing son Taylor John.

With a willing, though a shade sheepish, LSO St Luke's Community Choir he ran through soul hooks, Bach, an Elvis rocker and hilarious Gilbert and Sullivanesque cod-opera.

The gig was a tour de force, but McFerrin makes music-making seem so naturally pleasurable an activity that he never seems like the creature from another world his extraordinary skills suggest.

 

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