Seville, (EFE).- Half a century making half the world dance to the rhythm of funky. The credentials of New Yorker Nile Rodgers are clear and he puts them on the table without leaving anything up his sleeve, and today he has played a new hand of that game on the stage of the Icónica Sevilla Fest, with his inseparable Chic.
It would take too long to list all the awards that this mythical group has won throughout its history, so it is better to focus on the fact that, at 70 years old, the show by Niles Rodgers & Chic is a true tribute to black music, the that comes from the heart of voices like that of Kimberly Davis, who, with the permission of the band leader, is a marvel of everything that a few musical notes can generate in a woman’s throat.
Niles has released ‘Le Freak’ so that the square began to dance
And in the middle of Seville’s Plaza de España, the stage of the legendary Studio 54 nightclub has been set up, and Rodgers has appeared there, with a guitar in hand worn out by years and years of chords and some disagreement, and launching his first proclamation to the public : “Are you ready? I want to hear it one more time, are you ready? ”, And he released ‘Le Freak’ so that the square began to dance.
The thing about this band is to stop and listen calmly. They sound like an LP of the time, in which “we produced songs for Diana Ross, David Bowie, Durán Durán… all the best”.
Nile Rodgers remembers him from time to time, in case anyone forgets that without him and his partner Bernard Edwards, who since 1996 has been following his concerts from Studio 54 from beyond, black music would never have been the same.
Nile Rodgers & Chic enlazan ‘Everybody Dance’, ‘Dance, Dance, Dance’ y ‘I Want Your Love’
‘Everybody Dance’, ‘Dance, Dance, Dance’ and ‘I Want Your Love’ linked, one after the other, and people no longer know if they are at a music festival in Seville or in a Brooklyn joint listening to a budding singer named Diana Ernestine, who would consecrate life as Diana Ross.
And it is that going to see Nile Rodgers & Chic is preparing to listen to versions of songs that are not versions, because when a producer puts his soul into a song it becomes his own even if someone else makes him famous, so if the New Yorker announces Madonna, all you have to do is close your eyes and enjoy ‘Like A Virgin’ and ‘Material Girl’, and if ‘Notorius’ sounds, it’s the least of it that Simón Le Bon isn’t by your side with Durán Durán at the controls.
To say that Nile Rodgers is a true music icon is an understatement. Producer, composer, arranger and guitarist, he has to his professional credit having created some of the most important and recognized hits in the history of modern music, both for himself and for other artists, but he may not have known when Chic was born in 1976 that had changed the concept of disco music forever.
All of his songs today have been sung in Seville
All his songs have entered the Billboard Hot 100 list, the most important in the United States, and some have been at number 1, but all those that have come out of the instruments of his band today have been sung equally in Seville, something only reserved for a few.
Seeing the reaction of people in their early 20s, whose parents were still schoolchildren when John Travolta went out to party on a Saturday night, has been quite an experience in the torrid Sevillian night when songs like ‘Thinking Of You’ sounded, linked with ‘ My Feet Keep Dancing’, adorned on stage with a succession of photos of some of the hundreds of artists who have made Rodgers’ musical ideas famous.
And that’s how a New York disco night went by next to the Guadalquivir, topped off with ‘Good Times’, which Chic has been singing since 1978, recalling in its lyrics that time moves on and the clock keeps turning, like those eternal disco balls that today are antiquarian meat. or a nostalgic bachelor’s room, and that a festival wanted them, at least once, to be hung in the middle of the most iconic Plaza de España in the musical world.