Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Chaka Khan’s arrival at the Royal Festival Hall was preceded by a film showing famous admirers such as Joni Mitchell and fellow Chicagoan Michelle Obama. Then from stage right came a beaming Khan, holding a microphone and greeted by a grand ovation.“Welcome to the Meltdown,” she announced. The singer is this year’s guest curator of the Southbank Centre’s festival, an annual 10-day programme of events. Previous holders of the post have included David Bowie, Ornette Coleman and Patti Smith. Khan, feted as “the queen of funk”, belongs in their company. But her Meltdown line-up is underpowered: the acts don’t come close to matching the prominence of past participants such as Nina Simone and Radiohead. And her opening night concert didn’t strike the right note either.She was accompanied by a large backing troupe whose number included a brass trio, two percussionists, three singers and four dancers. The format was the 50th-anniversary show that she is currently touring (including a Norway date during Meltdown). Its setlist was drawn from her 1970s and 1980s heyday. The earliest songs went back to when she was frontwoman of funk band Rufus. After that, she went solo with soul, disco and pop hits, not so much adapting herself to a new era of synthesiser-driven music as imprinting herself on it. (She objects to the “queen of funk” label as too limiting.)The slick mid-1980s pop of “This Is My Night” was given a bustling soul-R&B makeover by her band. Cheers went up for the full-fat bassline of “Tell Me Something Good”, the very funky Stevie Wonder-penned hit that first launched Khan into the charts a decade earlier in 1974 when she was in Rufus. But then the momentum stalled. Shifts in gear caused the audience to sit down and get back up like jack-in-the-boxes. The flow wasn’t helped by Khan’s charming but roundabout stage chat, stronger on random trivia (“I’m not a phone person”) than reminiscences of her storied career.At 71, she can still sing. The recent filmed performance that she did for NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series is proof of that. But her voice was less striking at the Royal Festival Hall. Or rather, it was too striking. Brash amplification gave an overbearing quality to the big blaring cries that she regularly unleashed. The audience acclaimed these vocal irruptions, but they actually had the effect of capsizing songs. Nostalgic desire for her to be the power vocalist of old was understandable. But she sounded better suited to quieter, more mellifluous numbers such as Rufus’s “Magic in Your Eyes”. She tried to start a singalong during another Rufus song, “Sweet Thing”, but the response was mild. Lungs were being saved for a rapturously received closing rendition of her signature hits “I’m Every Woman” and “Ain’t Nobody”. However, this finale was weakened by the ill-judged halt in proceedings that came before it, when Khan exited for a 10-minute break, leaving the stage to her dancers. They in turn stood frozen in place for an excruciating period of silence while a glitch with the DJ’s equipment was resolved. It summed up a stuttering start for this year’s Meltdown. ★★☆☆☆Meltdown Festival continues to June 23, southbankcentre.co.uk
