 For French blues singer Nina Van Horn, things haven’t changed much over the years. As a 15-year-old, the hippie child was attending Woodstock, getting stoned and enjoying the music. Four decades later, Horn is still enjoying the groove, singing the blues in songs about alcoholism, drugs, women’s rights and homosexuality.
The French-born, Texas-raised musician has a husky voice, powerful stage presence and a wild, uninhibited style. “I began my career as a classical dancer, before switching to a soprano in operas,” said Horn in a telephone interview from France.
“Then I started singing country music and later switched to Texas blues. Who knows what I’ll be singing in ten years?” An explosive cocktail of sound and dance, Horn’s concerts feature the singer with Janis Joplin glasses and a Texan cowboy hat, boogieing to her music. And it’s not just the glasses that Horn shares with Joplin. “Critics have often compared my voice with Joplin, though I doubt anyone can match her genius,” said the singer with a whisky-laced voice.
A rock ‘n’ roll rebel at heart, Horn found the blues while performing at the Harley Davidson rally in New Orleans almost a decade ago. After she was done wooing the audience, Blues Brother’s Dan Aykroyd asked her to take to the genre. “Aykroyd heard me sing and told me I had a very powerful bluesy voice”, she said. Since then, Horn has performed across the world at jazz and blues festivals with names such as Bette Midler, Chuck Berry, Eric Burdon and Buddy Guy. She even has her own radio show, Nina On The Rocks.
Excited about her debut gig in India, Horn describes the country as “a place of maharishis and nirvana, as we all thought back in the ’70s”. But a recent encounter with Shillong blues act Soulmate in the United States made her reconsider her old-fashioned view. “I didn’t know India had the blues, until I heard that young girl [Tipriti Kharbangar] sing.”
At her gig this fortnight, Horn is confident that it will “blow out the roof off the house”. She will sing and dance to her latest album, Hell Of A Woman, which features raw renditions of tracks by female blues greats such as Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday. Promising a riot of emotion, Horn only hopes that the energy and bonhomie of her music spreads with her audiences. Megha Mahindru |
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