3-voor-12 Album Review
Feminine power unfolds
March 3rd 2023 / by Rogier van Nierop
A feature by VPRO’s 3voor12 highlighting Vivienne’s third album and global collaboration
Jazz singer and composer Vivienne Aerts lives in New York City, but when she has to be in the Netherlands, she does so from her home in Leiden. She studied here and was one of the founders of the student room festival Stukafest. She also performed several times during the Leiden Jazz Week and at the Hofjesconcerten. She then spread her wings and eventually graduated summa cum laude in singing and composition from the renowned Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. The ‘Typuhthâng’ [Type-of-thing], released today, is her third album.
The first thing that stands out is the care that has been taken with the presentation. The CD in our hands is embedded in a booklet. It is a work of art made of cocoa paper, on which the cover has been screen-printed by hand. It looks beautiful and it also gives a nice feeling to have a release in your hands again instead of streaming it. When you open the booklet, you see a dizzying number of collaborators; it was recorded by a hundred female musicians from more than forty countries.
On ‘Typuhthâng’ we hear calm, pleasant jazz in which Vivienne’s voice is framed as minimally as possible by, for example, piano, saxophone, trumpet, cello. These are alternated with three soundscapes with beautiful African harmonies. To our untrained ears, the harmonious harmonies made it sound a bit like ‘Baba yetu’, a cheerful, musical version of the Lord’s Prayer in Swahili. An exception is ‘The way you touched my hand’, in which disharmony and apparent chaos are created. This continues at the beginning of ‘Meeting the femmes: soundscape #2′, in which an atonal harp, electronic beeps and a heavy machine can be heard. All of this sounds undeniably disturbing. After that, this threat fortunately dissolves into African perseverance and joy.
Vivienne Aerts’ music connects people from different backgrounds on a deep and personal level, but in a light-hearted way. It contains themes such as self-esteem and the ability to follow your own path in life. These themes are also in the background of this album. Vivienne was inspired by Femmes de Virunga, an organization that helps women from DR Congo to become independent by teaching them to read, giving them leadership training and growing their own cocoa. This way they can improve their standard of living and get opportunities. Vivienne does not want to use her music as charity, but to promote the entrepreneurship of the Femmes de Virunga.
Because we want to know more about this, an interview with Vivienne about the project will appear on this site next week.
Date
March 3, 2023