Tracy Chapman illuminates Los Angeles in her spotlight moment

August 19, 2009, at the Wiltern

By Melissa Bobbitt
Published: August 22nd, 2009 | 12:25am

Concert lighting is usually such a middling detail. There's the cliché occasion when a band asks to see the audience better; the houselights go up and the crowd screams on cue. But unless you're Pink Floyd, the choreographed prisms tend not to amplify the power of what's being sung.

Leave it to folk goddess Tracy Chapman to demonstrate some of the most emotive ambiences imaginable. One could already suspect this show was going to be special — the typical standing-room-only Wiltern had its bottom floor filled with chairs, and concertgoers were asked to refrain from taking photographs. It was truly a night at the theater, like those of eras past when commoners would don their best suits and escape from the mundane via highbrow entertainment.

The night’s opener, charming Gaby Moreno, christened the evening with her bilingual tomes of heartache and triumph. She was like a Guatemalan Regina Spektor, minus the kitsch factor. This radiant singer-songwriter deserves to be huge given her excellent intro to this stellar night.

Chapman then told her stories accompanied by three backing musicians and a fluid array of color: a hellish crimson bathed the stage for the spiritual "Say Hallelujah," and the luminescence throbbed like a heartbeat for the tribal protest song "America." The glow grew more festive for the cabaret rock of "I Did It All," a number the artist described as a fictional account of a zealous older woman in lingerie performing at a piano bar — but that could've described her effortless transition through multiple genres over the years. This agility was further seen in two covers during the evening: a groovy take on the Cure's "Lovesong" and a commanding Bob Marley homage, "Get Up, Stand Up."

Stand up is what Chapman’s fans did once they heard the palm-muted strains of her mega-hit "Give Me One Reason" off 1995's New Beginning (Elektra). Relegated to their chairs for most of the gig, there was something hypnotic about the song that later turned into an extended gritty blues jam. Seemingly reserved Baby Boomers huddled into the desolate pit area and converted it into a dance floor. One by one, more people rose as they gyrated and flailed like they were a Pentecostal congregation.

Other unique factors of Chapman's performance were her incredible shrinking guitars (two of which looked like power tools bred with ukuleles) and the audience's enthusiasm for the newer material. The anthemic "Sing for You," from her 2008 album, Our Bright Future (Atlantic), garnered even more applause and fan vocalizing than her most recognizable work, the 1988 song "Fast Car." No wonder Chapman can boast a career that spans three decades; there is a uniting, empowering, enlightening quality to her art.

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Tracy Chapman official site

Tracy Chapman MySpace page

Atlantic Records