‘Venues like this we have to continue to support, especially in these times,’ announced Imaani Saleem before closing her set at the 606 Club, an independent venue based in West London that has championed live music since 1976 with founder Steve Rubie at the helm. The current lockdown has unfortunately coincided with the EFG London Jazz Festival, meaning that all planned shows have had to cancel their live audiences and perform for the camera instead.
Imaani represented the UK in the European Song Contest 1998, finishing in second place with house track ‘Where Are You’. She has enjoyed an extensive career as session and backing vocalist, solo artist, and member of acid-jazz collective Incognito. She was joined by special guest Lex Cameron, a familiar face within the capital’s live music scene, who has performed with Leon Ware, Chic, and Omar amongst others. (Check out his interview with UK Vibe for a deeper examination of Cameron’s career.)
Livestreams like these – crystal clear, unforgiving sound with no stage theatrics or production to hide behind – put into perspective how talented these vocalists are. Imaani kicked off her set with William DeVaughan’s ‘Be Thankful For What You Got’, passing the baton to Cameron for his airy falsettos and infusing that iconic refrain – ‘Diamond in the back, sunroof top, diggin’ the scene, with a gangsta lean‘ – with the tongue-in-cheek warmth it requires. She lent her dark, smoky alto to two of her originals – the funky ‘Just For One Day’ and smouldering slow-jam ‘Let’s Do It Right’ – before paying tribute to her Incognito family with ‘Always There’. The soulful house tune – originally an instrumental by Ronnie Laws (1975), then recorded with vocals by Side Effect in 1976, and eventually Incognito’s breakthrough hit in 1991 – was given an intelligent re-imagining as a guitar-driven ballad. She also brought beautiful nuance to Bill Withers’ ‘Can We Pretend’ and coloured Stevie Wonder’s ‘Higher Ground’ with soulful adlibs.
Cameron performed a selection of his neo-soul-tinged originals, showcasing an agile falsetto that served him well on a cover of Curtis Mayfield’s (risky) ‘Move On Up’. Cameron and Imaani’s voices blended sweetly on the set’s closing performance of Earth, Wind & Fire’s ‘Fantasy’.
