Sharon Jones

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings

San Lorenzo Estate

Rome

July 13, 2012

You won't find the coolest, most energetic, danceable and - certainly - most surprising concert of the Roman summer in some starchitect-designed setting like the Cavea at the Auditorium, or somewhere as imposing as Rock in Roma, or the Olimpico. Nor in one of the many summer festivals scattered across postcard-perfect towns up and down the peninsula. Sharon Jones and her marvelous retro-soul band can be found on a small stage in Piazzale del Verano, Rome's cemetery district, with the echo of trams and traffic just a few feet away, in a setting that feels more like a meat festival or a Porchetta Fair, a space hemmed in by plastic sheeting and bedsheets, neon lights and stalls selling sandwiches, posters or alternative clothing, white plastic deckchairs and long tables with benches like something out of a Festa dell'Unità, marking out a dance floor that holds just a few hundred people - devoted followers of that soul-music cult which, as Zucchero puts it, will never die. Especially as long as new generations (from Amy Winehouse to Nina Zilli, from Mark Ronson to Luca Sapio, the gritty, passionate Roman up-and-comer who opens the night) keep dressing it in contemporary clothes.

Sharon isn't "new generation" - far from it. She belongs to that breed of artists success never even deigned to glance at sideways, and for whom paying their dues wasn't just a long haul: it was endless, eternal, with no light at the end of the tunnel. And yet, appearances aside, she was destined for the same redemption she howls about in her blues: a clerk, a driver, a part-time backing singer, this fellow citizen of Macon, Georgia - hometown also of Soul Brother No. 1, James Brown - finally found herself, past forty, in the Brooklyn studios of what would become Daptone Records. One in a thousand, maybe one in a hundred thousand, makes it: in that session the light switched on, and that light (as the Blues Brothers used to say) lit her up, elevated her to stardom. Not of the first magnitude, perhaps, but enough to cut four albums, rack up rapturous reviews, chart, build a solid name for herself within a few years, and tour the world in that Soul Revue style the "ancestors" of Stax and Motown used to bring on the road back in the '60s.

So picture the scene: the little stage at Super Santo's - San Lorenzo Estate first welcomes the Dap-Kings, a tight mini-orchestra of seasoned pros all dressed to the nines (they're from Brooklyn, but they could just as well be from Memphis), who warm things up and send first one, then the other backing singer out front. A mid-tempo funk groove kicks off, fairly relaxed. Then the stage animal makes her entrance, and everything turns frenetic: a bit stocky, bow-legged, dressed in a gold outfit all sequins and fringe, she takes possession of the stage and begins her tireless back-and-forth, talking, driving the band on, singing, shouting, dancing. A cross between James Brown and Tina Turner, she grabs hold immediately and won't let go until the very end. The crowd, grinning from ear to ear, look at each other, a little stunned. Who on earth is this woman? And how does she have all this energy? Is she on something? Whatever she's taking, I want some too. Sharon and her Dap Kings never let up; the one time she says 'well, now I'll do a slower one, to relax' turns out to be a trap - the verse starts out quiet, but then the wave builds right back up. After five minutes she's already got the crowd on a leash, leading us wherever she pleases, more and more bewildered and happy to have fallen into a temporal black hole and resurfaced in some indistinct corner of the American South - okay, it's porchetta instead of fried chicken, but there's beer, there's heat, people are dancing, and the band knows exactly what it's doing.

Only one cover, a Gladys Knight tune - everything else is original material, but it's not the songs that make the difference, it's the unstoppable energy of this force of nature that sweeps away everything and everyone. She calls a boy up to dance with her on stage, then a girl (Anna, she's on YouTube too), Sharon all sparkling in gold high-heeled sandals, the two of them in beach shorts and tank tops. Then she kicks off her own shoes too - "let me show you how my ancestors used to dance" - and launches into a Land of 1000 Dances-style tour de force, spinning, hopping, throwing in a bit of Chuck Berry's duck walk and a bit of Tina Turner's bayou-dervish whirl. There's soul, and rhythm and blues, and funk, the whole lineage. Sharon talks to the crowd, and raps, and talks to the Dap-Kings, and spins around. She contorts and unwinds, smiles and pulls a tough superbad face, mouths the words to the songs and moves back and forth, in and out of the spotlight. The autofocus starts to give up, "where the hell have you football scores taken me tonight", the camera's auto-exposure hangs in there but every so often the frame goes all black or all white - clearly it wasn't expecting a night of overtime like this either. The Dap-Kings don't let up either, precise to the millimeter, the horns trading solos and counterpoints, same with the backing singers, the rhythm section chugging along like a steamboat on the Mississippi. Every now and then I turn around, and I see the same faces wearing that same expression from the start - nothing has changed: astonishment and wonder and joy, the soul virus has taken hold of the crowd, no antidote to be found, for a hundred days and a hundred nights nobody will ever forget her, Sharon.

After a good hour, the set ends; I rush off before the encore since my unsuspecting family is waiting, a night drive to the seaside ahead of us, a bit dazed - was that all real or...? "Grandpa, it's unbelievable, but it's all true," I think, as the austere facade of the Verano peeks out behind the glare of the headlights. For a moment I also think gratefully of the organizers who had the nerve to lose a hefty pile of money just to slot this superb show into a "normal" lineup, and of everyone else in the city who didn't get there first, too cautious - may the Power of Soul come down on you and fill you with cramps the first time you try to dance. But redemption, as we know, is just around the corner: all it takes is believing, maybe next time.

Meanwhile, Soul Power rules tonight, in the heart of Rome.

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04/05/2026