Fluid Dynamics
The words “gender” and “genre” both come from the Latin “genus” (which itself comes from the Greek root “gen-”) meaning “kind” or “type.”
And so, it should come as no surprise that I’ve recently seen more queer musicians (and writers) embracing the term “genre-fluid” as it relates to their art-making. Exploration of one engenders the other.
One such musician is Natti Vogel, whom I saw play with his “all-star chamber orchestra” at National Sawdust on Friday, Dec. 15.
Vogel is a true performer. Wearing an iridescent body suit, silk scarf, and black socks — no shoes — he engaged in stage patter that was just as delightfully ludicrous.
He was joined by his “classically-trained, genre-fluid musician friends” for a mix — of pop? cabaret? jazz? — that defied categorization.
But first, Vogel — legs dangling off the stage, nearly touching-distance — sang “La Sirene” in Ladino. He was accompanied by harpist Yoshi Weiberg, whose nimble fingers glistened with black nail polish. Behind them, the Hamsa flag, a symbol of Israeli/Palestinian peace.
In “Love for a Limited Time Only,” Vogel rested atop a plucky groove by cellist Sam Quiggins and drummer Zack O’Farrell. This soon swelled to a big-band sound, with the addition of horn-player Kyra Sims, saxophonist Emily Pecoraro, violinist Sarah Haines, and violist Mira Williams.
Vogel has an astonishing vocal range. From low rumble to wispy falsetto. But throughout the night, he was plagued by balance issues. His grumbly diction at odds with the chock-full lyrics.
For example, in “Each Other’s Apartments,” a song that Vogel described as “White Lotus meets Grindr” — with plinking harp, sax licks, and spooky glisses — I completely missed the line, “We’ve got discreet secretions secretly stored deep in our sacrums.”
It was clearly an off-night for him. Before the “hard-to-sing” “I Don’t Want to Find the One,” the admittedly-hoarse Vogel asked for a cup of hot tea.
Even so, in “Pen in Hand,” Vogel, at the piano, managed to resuscitate the stale love-song genre, with sweet strings and gasping lyrics: “I’m falling in love with intangible things”
In “Promise Anything,” which Vogel describes as a musical “tantrum,” I was drawn to the line “swaying like a metronome,” with flute trills building to a minor key change.
“I know he wasn’t perfect,” scats Vogel in “Tommy,” accompanied by solo cello. “You called him crunchy, and I’m just soggy.”
As a borough newcomer, I chuckled at “We All Move to Brooklyn,” especially the line, “It’s not ’cause the rents were high. They’re actually higher here”
But the denouement was “FAB,” in which the audience was asked to sing “free ass bitch” on E. Throughout, I couldn’t stop staring at Quiggins’s unfaultable spiccato stroke at the frog.
“It’s the suffix to the adjective which modifies the noun,” Vogel riffed, as the grammar geek in me cheered. “Three words that together mean a lot.”