Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | NXg | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Full Force X Makeena brings pop theatre to Delhi

This group from France made its debut in 2002 with the album Death on the Wax. Last year they further established their identity as a band with a sophisticated technological sound with the album Instinctive Derive.

Spectators at the Ashok Theatre were greeted by 2 emcees, a bass guitar player and mixing machines. Initially, the mainly expatriate audience sat stiff in their seats. The X Makeena band members were clearly discomfited by this seriousness. And for the second item urged the audience to let loose and stand up. The performance certainly picked up with a more animated crowd. The music of deejays is meant to make the body move and not to make the mind think. Mainly performed at discothèques, the mixes of deejays are best enjoyed in intimate spaces. The space of discothèques and night clubs allows for a certain abandon within closed confines. An open air theatre doesn’t allow that. The audience was thus divided into two — the convinced and the not-so-convinced. The convinced gently head-banged in the front, while the latter sat sceptically glued to their seats.

X Makeena’s show was like pop theatre. The performers had donned elaborate gas masks. They were attired in workman’s fatigues, keeping with their underground loyalties. Dancing is central to hip-hop music, and while X Makeena stayed away from the more extreme moves, they did entertain with their clown walk, ‘gangsta’ walk and grinding. They alternated between zombie-like moves and mechanical-doll-manoeuvres. A masked figure, all dressed in black with attached wings, whirled around the stage in mesmerising moves. The theatrics of the performance served to reinforce the group’s appreciation for circus acts and street theatre.

The music itself, while highly electrical and eclectic, also had familiar riffs like that of Linkin Park. Their music deals with concepts like energy, passion and conflict. The two singers enjoyed a perfect unison and often their duets sounded so synchronised, it nearly resembled lip-syncing!

They have travelled with their electric sound over three continents and have over 150 gigs to their name.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail