Luka Bloom Parterre Oct 27th

I`ve been waiting for post-modern irony to infiltrate the folk music scene - to really infiltrate, not just point fingers of cynicism like  Ann Magnuson`s  Folk Song.   Lyle Lovett made in roads with his eponymous album… but still, you could kind of tell he was just having fun. Maybe post-modernism is like cubism, hard to describe, but you know it when you see it?  In any case, I wasn't sure I'd met a post modern folk singer till Luka Bloom took the stage last Thursday (Oct 27th) at the Parterre.

"Luka Bloom sings his songs of humanity and love", read the advertisement, and he certainly did.   I arrived early to buy a ticket and - after a standing in a very long and chilly line -  I was extremely  lucky, as I got the last unreserved seat for the show.  Charlie must have felt like this when he opened the chocolate bar with the golden ticket for his Chocolate Factory tour … I didn`t know who Luka Bloom was, but he certainly seemed to be popular - and the crowd was almost completely Swiss, not German, not British, not Irish, just pure local Swiss.  Once inside, the audience spent time staring at each other and tried to warm the place up, it was a chilly night after all.  Eventuallly a face popped out behind the curtain at the side of the stage. It was the man himself checking to see if the crowd was ready.  Which we were.  Luka took the stage:  "no intermission, no back-up band, just him, the audience and the guitar for as long as it took." After the first few songs, he stopped the show, said the room configuration wasn`t working for him, insisted we  move the tables and chairs at the front of the room  to the side so that the folks standing in the back could come forward - for the sake of the gig.  And, in fact, the atmosphere brightened immediately. I forget sometimes that the performer needs the crowd as much as we need him.  

What about his music made the word post-modern come to mind?  He defintely had a super cool New York- Ciarraí vibe going on - and it was difficult to know whether to take what he said completely seriously... I still don`t know what he thought of his audience, for instance how to take his comment that outsiders find the poverty of the Irish romantic, and how that romance sweeps across the world…making the world love the Irishman…   how it's even more romantic back-home now with the recession on full bore. (Since when is poverty romantic? Clearly he can't have meant what he said, but I gather that ambivalence is the watchword of the post-modern world).

Mostly  I remember the mood of the  evening, the thoughtfulness and the good cheer and thinking, ah, how glad I am that I didn`t give in to the cold or to the long long list of tomorrow`s to-do`s and glad I am that I had the good sense to go out and see Luka Bloom play the Parterre on a weeknight.