May 7 2017 was a special evening at Bonn Folk Club. For one, the TV cameras of WDR came down to introduce the show to a wider audience. The other reason didn’t seem so important at the time, but proved to be – it was the appearance by a young man who had been drawing big crowds playing on the streets of Bonn. His name Melchi Vepouyoum. My REVIEW at the time said “Melchi is someone you might see playing on a street corner whilst the Justin Biebers of this world play to arenas. Is there any justice in this world? No there is not”. Well he still isn’t playing stadiums, but Melchi in 2026 has played Bonn Harmonie with his own band and at Stadtgarten this evening showed that early promise was no fluke. Together with the United Nations house-band reUNited this was an evening of familiar faces and once again proof that the streets of Bonn are paved, if not currently with gold, at least with excellent musicians.
Many readers will know the local band CAYU with John Hay. Before that though there was also a band of musical United Nations employees named, in typical english style, The UNbearables. I had them on my reporting radar a good ten years ago playing the Bonn Summer Festival (remember that?) in front of Bonn City Hall. The band went on to bring us CAYU and also the musicians standing in front of me this evening – reUNited. Indeed, it’s more of a splinter than a break, since Alexandre Paris and Budi Rosadiawan belong to both bands. The biggest difference is vocalist Carolin Schaulandt who works at UNESCO in Bonn and sings in more than 14 different languages and dialects, including Yiddish and Breton but also has scottish blood in her veins and a british accent that is distinctly north of the border.
The band themselves always have a smile on their faces and that quickly radiates out to the audience which, as always at Stadtgarten, starts relatively small at 7 pm and gradually builds until by 8:30 pm it’s usually pleasantly crowded but still with room to dance. Introducing the band, Bonn’s official Rock & Pop Organizer Hans-Joachim Over pointed out that this truly was an International group of musicians, so much so that every song would be in a different language. It seemed like a tall order, but ‘HaJo’ turned out to be right as far as I could make out. A record for the number of languages sung by one band in a set at Stadtgarten for sure.
That record could possibly have fallen straight away when the next band stepped onstage. In Cameroon there exists 55 Afro-Asiatic languages, 169 Niger-Congo languages, 4 Ubangian languages, and 2 Nilo-Saharan languages. Melchi Vepouyoum moved to Bonn some years ago from Yaoundé in Cameroon to sing songs that he knew few in the audience would understand. It seems like a brave but reckless decision until you actually hear and see him perform. He often descibes what the songs are about before playing them which helps a little. What helps the most however is his irresistable enthusiasm, his genuine smile and philosophy that we are here on the Earth only for a short time so let’s enjoy the moment – and of course the music!
It’s never been hard to enjoy the music that Melchi makes. In those early days in Bonn playing on the streets for small change having no band was no problem, just a challenge to overcome. In typical Melchi creative style he created his own ‘band’ by adding percussion pads to his guitar. The pads are still there this evening but rarely get any use. The solo shows developed into duo’s with cellist Leonie Wollersheim and now into a full electric band.
Despite the added volume and band members though Melchi still retains a personal feel to his concerts. This evening he even adds a guest star. Doing so proves to be rather a two edged sword so to speak. On the positive side there was added variation in the set when Paul Corrales came on to sing pop-rap songs in german. Negatively however, it was reminiscent of the hydration pauses during the recent World Cup where you felt that just as the performance was flowing everything stopped for ten minutes – in this case not for water but so that a keyboard was set up (for Melchi) in preparation for Corrales’ set. Better would have been giving Corrales a seperate set before Melchi’s appearance – although as I understood it the songs themselves were collaborations between the two so I guess that made the set-up more complicated. It did rather break the flow of Melchi’s early set.
The duo, when the show resumed, proved to be worth the wait though, and it’s great that Melchi’s music and ideas are still evolving. I’m looking forward to the results of this collaboration in weeks to come. Certainly, you only had to count all the people dancing front of stage to know that a Melchi/Corrales concert is going to be a lively, rhythmic experience. I’m sure we will be enjoying both men’s music for a long time to come.
