In Technos Historic Home, KAYTRANADA Pays Homage
Few people have had as great an influence on the Canadian music genre as DJ KAYTRANADA. KAYTRANADA was born in Haiti before migrating to Montreal as a child. He grew up listening to music from Montreal's vibrant club and hip-hop scene, introduced by his brother DJ Lou Phelps. As he began to produce his own music, his influences coalesced and propelled his unique brand of rap and R&B house music to a prominent position in the home community.
The Midwest has long been the home of culture, a genre that originated in Chicago's underground clubs in the 1970s. Detroit also has very strong ties to house, with Detroit's influential techno subgenre being an important influence of KAYTRANADA. In fact, I first saw KAYTRANADA live earlier this month at the Detroit Masonic Temple, where many of the city's founding artists have performed, including the Belleville Three.
The set itself is a lively and vibrant tribute to the Masonic Temple Theater and Michigan's love of house music. Even those in the row of seats behind the small ditch could feel KAYTRANADA's real presence on the stage because he could barely see her silhouette. To its credit, KAYTRANADA has a very unique stage performance for a DJ, combining its mixes (mostly original and live) with two trips to the table. His body language seemed to dictate the mood of the audience, and as the band progressed through their final act, the kinetic energy on stage seemed to grow with him. The graphics and lighting are also well designed and executed, interacting with the ornate interior of the Masonic Temple.
The long sequence of sets is natural and shows the depth of the KAYTRANADA discography. Bubba (2019) plays almost every song on his latest album and also plays half of the songs on his previous album, 99.9% in 2016. You'd think that the long set duration would sell out audiences, considering. Many have been in the theater since it opened at 7pm and the main character doesn't show up until around 10:30pm. But as more and more viewers start recommending their mole, or just feeling the music on a deeper level, the venue gets louder and louder. KAYTRANADA kept most of their signature chorus at the end of the set, meaning the audience was really warmed up with the hits.
The crowd was so loud that there was no question whether there would be an encore or not. "It's All My Time, Thank You" at the end of the official KAYTRANADA set was almost fantastic and sure enough, after about 30 seconds of cheering, "Be Your Girl" returned to the deck a second time. The next day, she headed to Brooklyn for a concert at the legendary Mirage, where she spoiled the audience with a 15-minute encore of her internet collaboration performance Girl. When he finally left the stage for good, he did so alone, knowing he had exhausted all the energy from the crowd he could muster.
Daily Art Writer Ryan Brace can be reached at rcbrace@umich.edu .