Ursula Yovich@ Becks MusicBox, Perth (14/02/11)

Thu 17th Feb, 2011 in Gig Reviews

Ursula Yovich is a beautiful singer but it was her storytelling abilities that really shone on Monday night at Becks Music Box. It was nice for non-valentine celebrators to see that the crowd was not completely full of canoodling couples, but a nice array of ages and backgrounds. Becks is back and reliably bringing interesting acts for us to sample during the Perth International Arts Festival.

Yovich impressed with her vocals by entering the stage singing This Will Be. This was the first of many covers she sang scattered appropriately between her tales of family life, love and loss. Also scattered throughout her performance were some of her own songs which held powerful messages, such as Magpie Blues. Yovich’s own songs were just as powerful as other classics like Field of Gold which brought a tear to many eyes in the crowd.

A self described “serboriginal”, Yovich described the meeting of her Serbian immigrant father and her indigenous mother, from Arnhem Land. Yovich continued to tell the story of her upbringing and the cultural implications of having the heritage she did. The love and warmth she felt toward those close to her beamed out of her to create quite an overwhelming experience. Family and her heritage is obviously crucial to her identity and her description allowed audience members to either connect to her experience or to be educated on issues and experiences of indigenous members of our community, such as loss of identity and language, and suicide.

The nature of her act was such that the audience felt close to Yovich. We were in the privileged position of being invited in to her life story, and it showed great courage for her to stand up and show her heart and soul to the crowd. It was humbling to see a woman proud of her life, of the good and bad moments and confident in herself enough to show her silly side with no sign of being affected.

Whilst being a moving show it certainly wasn’t all serious, with Yovich recreating how she would practice being a “rockstar” in her bedroom with an 80’s mashup delightfully accompanied by over-accentuated moves only a ten year old wannabee could master and stories of swimming through croc-infested waters in the Northern Territory just to get through the flood water in order to get the plane to Perth where a scholarship allowed her to study music. There were equal moments of tear-jerking with giggling and it was this balance that won the audience over.

And her voice! Moments of stunning purity and beautiful expressiveness saw Ursula Yovich win over the crowd. The band was pretty good too, whilst Yovich commanded the crowd’s full attention, the band provided solid backing. Yovich’s use of different languages also added an extra interest, singing a beautiful Italian song, Caruso to demonstrate how music can transgress language when expressing feelings and beauty. The audience were also treated to some of her Mother’s language Brada and her Father’s Serbian; amongst other things she sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow in all three of her languages, including English.

Yovich nurtured her audience through the show with the care that she obviously gave her family whom she helped to raise. It was an appropriate performance for Valentine’s Day the way it should be: about real love, heart and soul.