It began and ended with a similar proposal: a seventies mirror ball on the screen at the back of the stage while the group gave energy to two disco music classics, Le Freak, to start the night, and Good Times, to finish it, both songs signed by the group Chic. Their leader, Nile Rodgers, was smiling on stage with a black and white printed suit, sunglasses, a hat and his legendary found spread over the shoulders. From his Fender Stratocaster guitar came that rhythmic, elegant and almost percussive sound that has defined much of the history of pop music and that today seems more influential than ever: look for it in the new albums of today’s young stars like Dua Lipa, Harry Styles or Sabrina Carpenter.
Even during the hour and a half of the concert it seemed that the scorching atmosphere of these days in Madrid granted a respite and from time to time a small breeze arrived. That or what came out of the stage produced so much pleasure that it seemed that even the inclement temperature gave a truce and joined the party.
Excellent atmosphere in a new Botanical Nights recital, held in the Botanical Garden of the Complutense University of the capital; full, about 4,000 people, many of them of a, let’s say, mature age, although there were groups of young people and some children accompanying their parents.
Nile Rodgers is a regular on Spanish summer cycles because his show couldn’t be more fun and uplifting. It also works as a kind of short course in what has been the most danceable part of pop music: from the explosion of disco music in the late seventies, capitalized on the New York club Studio 54 (which he cited last night), to the revitalization of the genre in figures like Beyoncé or Daft Punk.
Rodgers was accompanied by a fantastic group with a saxophonist, a trumpeter, two keyboardists, a drummer, a bassist and, above all, two vocalists with throats that accumulate the entire history of black music. Their names: Audrey Martells and Naomi Rodgers. The sound was excellent throughout.
“Are you ready to sing, are you ready to dance?” exclaimed Rodgers, 73, at the beginning of the concert. The audience was, of course, because they knew what awaited them since the New York guitarist has been performing almost the same concert for several years: a compendium of Chic songs, and a selection of songs written or produced by him for other artists. So they sounded I’m Coming Out (Diana Ross), Like a Virgin (Madonna), We Are Family (Sister Sledge), Modern Love (David Bowie), Cuff It (Beyoncé) o Get Lucky (Daft Punk).
dedicated Thinking of You, of Sister Sledge’s repertoire, to her partner and bassist Bernard Edwards, who died in 1996 at the age of 43, with whom he formed Chic in the seventies to lay the foundations of club music.
Rodgers peppered this unbeatable repertoire with jokes and explanations about how the songs were conceived. Because this man, after escaping two cancers, all he wants today is to have a good time on stage and for viewers to enjoy an important piece of pop history. This is what happened last night.