« My name is Dalva. This is a rather strange name for someone from the upper Midwest […] »
Jim Harrison
Reconnect our roots to the ground, our blood at what stands us up.
Vibrations
I don’t know where to start, who are the words. What kind of tones.
Bob Kaufman wrote : « Perhaps…
Should I sing a requiem, as the closes ?
Perhaps it is more fitting to shout nonsense.
Should I run to the streets, screaming lovesongs ?
Perhaps it is more consistent to honk obscenities.
Should I chew my fingernails down to my wrist ?
Perhaps it is better to blow eternal jazz.
Maybe I will fold the wind into neat squares. »
Blues
meaningful tears and senseless wounds.
DALVA crosses these rails made of flesh that bind the Mississippi mangroves to the Brussels swamps, the Karakoro river to squats of the Seine shores.
Blues
It is this tear that heals the vacuum of the uprooted,
This laugh that has no echo, but roars in between the lines,
The smell of death that blows on the palm groves.
It is felt in the folk’s songs, branded like cattle.
DALVA sings the chained freedoms with a She-wolf voice
composes with a sharp-toned guitar, a dobro, a banjo,
drowns in a saxophone that roars and rants,
rages from a laid back drum stroke coming apart.
She falls for a bass that sometimes turns into a double, going into a trance with a jew’s harp.
DALVA escapes to Mauritania
forgets herself in Mali
caresses west african deserts on gnawa’s rythms,
blown by a calebash
a gouroumi
and a marimba.
Her music sways between rooted blues and urban noise, trance from the deserts and anger from the class-struggle.
Blues is a cry from the guts.
It frees souls and flesh from the shackle set by the ruling power.
DALVA offers two different shows :
URBAN DESERTS BLUES
musical and poetic show adapted to concert stages and halls
original song lyrics and compositions – programmable from duet to the sextet formula
BLUES OF THE UPROOTED
the uprooting of modern occidental societies is questionned in this multidisciplinary show .
DALVA mixes her own songs with a selection of Bob Kaufman poems, an afro-american author coming from the Beat Generation. He dwells within DALVA from the beginning.
A universe where the creation of words, rythms and melodies, offer a voyage shaped in paintings improvised on stage by PAROLE, a Brussels artist.