What: An Evening with Bobby McFerrin
Where: Royal Theatre
When: Saturday, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $60.50, $75.50; 250-388-4423 or 250-386-6121
Jazz-pop singer Bobby McFerrin is best known for his 1988 hit Don’t Worry, Be Happy.
The bad news for devotees of the chirpy, feel-good tune (the first a cappella song to reach No. 1 on the Billboard chart) is that he won’t be singing it in Victoria.
Or anywhere else, any time soon.
“I haven’t sung that song in performance since the late 1980s,” McFerrin said in an email interview. “The arrangement that everyone would like to hear — the album version with seven overdubbed vocal tracks — can’t be done live.”
The good news is that McFerrin (who perhaps provided inspiration for Pharrell’s omnipresent ditty Happy) has more than that one trick up his sleeve.
Renowned for his distinctive, octave-hopping delivery, he arrives at the TD Victoria International JazzFest with his five-piece band, spirityouall, which has been touring for two years.
In Victoria, McFerrin and company will offer selections from his 2013 disc spirityouall, a critically acclaimed tribute to black spirituals. It’s dedicated to McFerrin’s father, Robert McFerrin, who recorded an influential album of spirituals, Deep River, in 1957.
Spirityouall contains traditional spirituals, McFerrin’s original compositions and a cover of Bob Dylan’s I Shall Be Released.
In a laudatory review, the Guardian newspaper reported the album “manages to preserve the defiance, drama, faith and heart of original gospel classics while making them sound like contemporary music.”
Here is an edited version of the Times Colonist’s Q&A session with McFerrin.
Times Colonist: I note you don’t do phone interviews on tour. Do you do special things to protect your voice?
McFerrin: I drink a lot of water and a lot of tea with honey. I eat healthy foods and take vitamins. But mostly I live a very quiet existence offstage. I leave the theatre right away and go to bed; I don’t hang out and have conversations in noisy places. I wake up and read the Book of Psalms and get right with myself and with God.
TC: I read that you ordinarily spend two hours daily reading the Bible and engaging in spiritual practice. Can you say something about the role of religion/spirituality as it relates to your music?
M: For me, it’s the centre of everything. I think all music is prayer.
TC: Is there one notion or philosophy that permeates all your music-making?
M: I think in music and in life it’s all about moving forward, moving from one moment to the next, open to joy and surprise. So if I’m sitting on stage singing a solo piece, I’m looking for new developments and discoveries. If I’m having a conversation, I’m ready to enjoy whatever happens next. For me, it’s not about formulating and planning, it’s about letting go.
TC: As you get older (I believe you are 64) have you altered the way you sing? Has your voice, the timbre perhaps, changed?
M: The range is surprisingly the same. Maybe a slight difference in timbre sometimes, or in my reaction to being tired. But voices are like that, younger or older, they are different every day. And you use what you’ve got on any given day. The biggest difference is that I’m more drawn to quiet sounds. I’m less interested in running out to meet people and more interested in drawing them in.
And finally, more thoughts from McFerrin on Don’t Worry, Be Happy:
“While I’m grateful that the song means so much to so many people, I’m a lover of surprises, all things that are fresh and new.
“It’s hard to sing anything when people are half-listening to the version they already have playing in their heads. My whole way of making music is about inviting everyone to come share the moment with me, not knowing what’s going to come next.”
