The sounds of cheering fans swelled in Finney Chapel as the Indigo Girls took the stage last Saturday night.
At first, the stage looked rather empty with only two women and their guitars to fill the space. However, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers quickly demonstrated that they don’t need more than that to put on an inspiring and energized performance.
The Girls’ arrangement looked particularly stark after Cordero’s (the opening act) sprawling set. Cordero rocked the rafters with their Latin-influenced rock music and effervescent stage presence, inspiring salsa dancing in the isles of Finney.
Following Cordero’s exhilarating performance, the Indigo Girls played a mixture of folk rock tunes and sad, soulful songs, switching instruments with each number to get just the right sound. Over the course of the three hour show, they displayed their diverse musical talent using a banjo, a mandolin and harmonica in addition to several different guitars. Each instrument complimented their contrasting voices and articulate lyrics in a slightly different way.
Ray wore a T-shirt from a protest against the School of the Americas over her kilt and matching plaid pants. Indeed, activism was not far from the minds of the performers or their audience during the entire performance. As the Girls sang, “Well the world seems spent and the president has no good idea of who the masses are,” the audience erupted into raucous applause. These lyrics, from their song “Let it Be Me,” were written during George Bush Sr.’s presidency.
About halfway through the show, Saliers put down her guitar to talk a little about peace. She read a passage from Oberlin’s statement against the war and spoke briefly about the Indigo Girls’ feelings of solidarity with peace activists around the world. Both women said they were impressed by Oberlin’s socially conscious students.
Apparently, Saliers’ sister was an Obie. Near the end of the show, she said she’d have to tell her sister that her alma mater is “still cool.”
The show also worked well technically. The lighting, which was subtle, enhanced the symmetry of the unpretentious set-up. The sound of the instruments was perfectly balanced with the vocals. Not once did the Girls’ strumming overpower their voices or obscure their insightful lyrics, which carried all the way to the back of the room.
The acoustic duo played several songs from their newest album, Become You, which was released last year. In addition to these newer additions to their repertoire, the show was peppered with old favorites such as “Least Complicated,” “Galileo” and “Closer to Fine,” a song from their first full-length album to which everyone in the building seemed to know the words. The pews shook with the stomping of dancing feet during the more lively songs. When things were slowed down a bit, for ballads such as “Devotion,” a reverent hush fell over the audience, increasing the intimate feel of the event.
The Girls ended their show with an encore comprised of a request (“Love’s Recovery”) made earlier in the show, a song called “Go,” dedicated to Oberlin students arrested at the SOA protest last year and an acoustic anthem entitled “Finlandia.” “Finlandia,” a song the Girls wrote for their first EP in 1986, is one they do not often perform. However, a song that begins with the line, “This is my song, O God of all the nations, a song of peace for lands afar and mine,” provided a succinct ending to the Concert for Peace.