Canadian slam artist Sabina Romy took to the stage at Salle Niangoran Porquet for her first performance at this 13th edition of MASA.
By Luc-Hervé N’KO
She was in front of a packed audience. Flanked by two musicians – including the excellent percussionist Karl Henry Brezault – Sabina Romy presented her show, « Woyo ».
« In Bantu creation mythology, Woyo embodies the flow of life within each of us, » she explains. And it’s this magic that she communicates through the power of words. « The words I say are bigger than I am!”
Buoyed by this certainty, she took the floor, spouting out her slightly melodious words – flavored with her Québéquois accent – and indulging in her favorite game, that of instrumentalizing her emotions and feelings. « Slam is the instrument I’ve chosen to express the beauty of my ties to the world, » she asserts.
For an hour, the tension never subsided. Sabina Romy kept constant control of the way she shared her emotions with her audience and delivered her text, grave and austere, often cheerful and tinged with optimism, in a near-perfect exercise in memory. It was like a long poem or a story-slam, perfectly illustrating the well-known adage that things that are well conceived are easily said without looking for words, because, as she maintains, « my texts are drawn from my personal experiences, from my way of relating to life. And I think it’s so beautiful that I had to tell the world about it!”
Alternating in perfect symbiosis throughout this delightful show, the rhythms and march of the words that flowed from her mouth, like the steady, undulating streams of a peaceful river, were the perfect companions for the musical instruments on stage. The laments of the Peuhl shepherd’s flute, the drum accents of forest dances guided the « teller of words » and her audience to lands of different colors. The proximity of the audience – the 300-seat coliseum-shaped auditorium – was a major factor in the success of this beautiful artistic and convivial encounter, « to express the magic of life!«