Review by Andy Gray

A celebration of Marvin Gaye’s masterpiece, What’s Going On, continued the Gulbenkian Arts Centre’s new season of music.

The Canterbury show saw the Nu Civilisation Orchestra deliver on their musical director’s promise to ‘get between the grooves’ of an album that is widely acknowledged as an all-time great, and provide an ‘immersive’ journey through What’s Going On’s mellifluous, multi-textural layers.

The performance was the last of a nationwide tour held to commemorate the album’s 50th anniversary, a feat that might never have happened had record company big-wigs got their wish to bury What’s Going On’s original release due to concerns over its social-political themes.

Gaye had been one of Motown’s most bankable stars, a handsome, clean-cut singer of monster-sized hits (I Heard it the Through the Grapevine; Wherever I Lay My Hat – That’s My Home) which gently tugged at the heart strings of a distinctly mainstream audience. But following a musical hiatus and personal and professional trauma, Gaye, inspired by his brother’s horrific tales of life on the Vietnam frontline, decided to flee pop’s never-neverland to sing about what was ‘going on’ in the real world.

The show comprised two sets. The first featured the music Gaye supplied for the blaxploitation flick, Trouble Man. Released a year after What’s Going On, the score – and Nu Civilisation Orchestra’s on-point interpretation – encapsulated the hard, harum-scarum life many people were consigned to live in America’s seamier parts; the urgent bongos and wailing horns being redolent of many a 1970s cop show.

As far for the main event, What’s Going On, despite its hard-boiled subject matter, is an all-together gentler affair. Good luck to any orchestra tasked with reproducing the album’s complex arrangements which flow, like a glorious soulful suite, about the feet of its solid-gold pillars: Mercy, Mercy Me; Inner City Blues and of course, its imperious title track. Therefore, hat-tips and props all round for Nu Civilisation’s skilful handling of the record’s sonic nuances, particularly – as far as one could tell – the orchestra’s musicians were born a good few years after the album’s release.

Praise too to Noel McKoy, a vocalist filling the part of a singer beyond compare and doing a mighty impressive job. The evening also featured a stunning cameo from spoken word artist AFLO the Poet, whose lightning-fast, lyrically-adroit rap was a reminder that the issues Gaye raised in song five decades ago – racism, poverty, environmental apocalypse – are as relevant today.

Finally, a word for musical director Peter Edwards, whose sense of privilege at being given the opportunity to homage an artist and album he so clearly adores, set the tone for his orchestra’s masterful, yet respectful performance. Whatever their next musical project, we look forward to an encore.

For more information on upcoming Gulbenkian Arts Centre shows, click here.