From our special correspondent,
Five minutes before her big debut at the Coachella festival, we were scared for Angèle, with a sparse crowd, and Gorillaz who was playing at the same time on the main stage. But from the first notes of more meaning, hundreds of people gather in the huge Mojave tent. “Good evening Coachella, how are you tonight? My name is Angèle, I come from Belgium”, begins the singer, in perfect English. For 45 minutes, the one that most of the American public discovered on Friday evening, chained her hits, fully assuming her status as a queer icon and French-speaking queen of the dance floor.
Sparkling in a metallic miniskirt matched with a crop-top, the female artist of the year of the last Victoires de la musique was surrounded by half a dozen dancers and dancers unleashed as in a Harlem ballroom at night time. voguing. After raising the fever, Angèle, whom the LA Times presented as a “disco-pop” star, is more intimate. A rainbow flag on her shoulders, she tells the crowd how she wrote your queen when she “had doubts about the people (she) fell in love with”. “I realized that I wrote a lot of love songs but never about lesbian love,” continues to the cries of encouragement, who revealed two years ago that she was bisexual.
The Stromae effect
A few minutes later, presenting Swing your what, she launches a “Fuck the patriarchy” accompanied by a finger that makes a crowd now exceeding a thousand people roar. Hassina, a thirty-year-old from Los Angeles, had never heard of Angèle until a few weeks ago. “But I read the bio of all the artists programmed, and I saw that they came from Belgium, like Stromae, whom I adore. And listening, I understood that it was her who sang on Fever of Dua Lipa, I didn’t want to miss it”. For Joel, it was Spotify’s algorithms that played the Cupids, and love at first sight was immediate: “I just had to convince my girlfriend to skip Gorillaz,” he smiles. “I had a great time, even without knowing, it makes you want to dance,” slips Mary.
As the last festival-goers head for their next concert, two young girls put a black, yellow and red flag in a backpack. “We came from Belgium just for Coachella, we take the opportunity to spend a vacation in California”, explain Lise-Laure and Julie, saying “very pleasantly surprised by the reception of the American public”. Angèle, whose mini North American tour passes through Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Montreal and New York, can continue her world conquest.