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Southbank Centre, London
This was a triumphant night for the Indian folk-rocker Raghu Dixit. When I last saw him, in his home city Bengaluru, he was playing to a massive crowd who knew all his songs. But this was far tougher: it was the opening night of the Alchemy Festival of Asian Culture, his first major London concert and first appearance as a Southbank artist in residence. The Queen Elizabeth Hall was packed, and treated to a bravely experimental set.
He came on, barefoot and wrapped in a colourful lungi, demonstrating his powerful, soulful voice on his setting for thoughtful lyrics by the 19th-century poet Saint Shishunala Sharif, backed only by his acoustic guitar and trumpet from Bellowhead's Andy Mellon. Then he introduced his own folk-rock band, including electric violin and guitar, and now augmented by two more of the Bellowhead brass section and their drummer. They provided a new, jazzy setting for Dixit's rousing religious prayer Hey Bhagwan, followed by his "party song" Mysore Se Ayi, in which he got the entire hall frantically pogo-dancing.
From then on, he could do no wrong. He switched between Indian and western influences, from a scat mood piece that accompanied a dance sequence by Gauri Sharma Tripathi, to the soulful western pop of No Man Will Ever Love You Like I Do. It will be intriguing to see what he does next.
Across at the Festival Hall, the Punjabi Sufi singer Hans Raj Hans presented a very different soul style. Strangely, he looked more like a rock star than Dixit, with his long black hair, and sat cross-legged as he gradually shifted from slow balladry to ecstatic devotional climax. He had a fine voice, but lacked the passion of that great qawwali exponent, the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
