Yola, with The Gravities
The same quality that makes powerhouse English vocal standout Yola such a rewarding artist — her dizzying stylistic versatility — also has hampered her, at least commercially speaking.
Is she a country singer? A rock singer? A dance-music singer? A soul singer? An Americana singer? A jazz singer who hopes to create an Ella Fitzgerald-inspired musical? A broken-beat singer? Or a Broadway singer who won rave reviews last year as Persephone, Queen of the Underground, in the Tony Award-winning “Hadestown?”
To the benefit of Yola’s listeners — but the apparent confusion of myopic record companies, producers and the music industry at large — Yola performs all of these styles with equal skill, conviction and panache.
Her eclecticism is underscored by the diverse array of artists with whom she has collaborated. The list includes Adele, Dolly Parton, Gary Clark Jr., Massive Attack, Ringo Starr, Ludacris, Allison Russell, Groove Armada, Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, Bugz In The Attic, and Phantom Limb, the English country-soul band Yola sang with between 2005 and 2013.
Or, as Yola told me in a 2020 San Diego Union-Tribune interview: “I don’t think too much in a genre way. For me, it’s all different organs in the same body.”
She also spoke with unusual candor and eloquence about the experiences that shape her approach to music and life, and her refusal to be stereotyped.
“Well, I had a life of abject misery until I was 29 and (my wisdom) comes from being around people who misuse your good nature and underestimate your empathy because, to them, you’re a trope as a woman,” she told me.
“You get stuck in these environments where people are blissfully ignorant of their cognitive bias. As a result of that ignorance, they don’t understand the level of neglect you experience as an ‘other,’ as a not White guy. So, you constantly have to understand the nuance of how you’re feeling and be able to articulate that. Because, often, people don’t see or understand that this is how you’re feeling. That becomes a necessity of being a grown-up, of being a minority. And my particular minority is associated with emotionless-ness and stoic-ness.
“And we’re not all ubiquitously stoic. So, it’s the trope of the ‘strong Black woman’ — and you can’t be strong and stoic all the time. Crucially, you can’t be. … And so you have to figure things out for yourself a lot more and you end up with, maybe, a slightly more flexed muscle, in of how you interact with art and create. When it comes to self-care, you might be more aware of how you treat your body, the things that make you more relaxed, as well as technically and physically. You have to pick yourself up, because everyone is always assuming you’re alright.”
8 p.m. Wednesday.Belly Up, 143 South Cedros Ave., Solana Beach. $38.30-$64.55. bellyup.com
North Park Music Fest
Back for its fourth year, North Park Music fest is downsizing this year from two days to one, eliminating two of its three outdoor stages and pivoting to six indoor venues, all but two of which have a 21-and-up ission policy.
But the number of bands and solo artists is increasing, from not quite two dozen in 2024 to more than 40 this time, although the number of nationally prominent acts is dropping from three to one.
Happily, the one in question is noted singer-songwriter John Doe, who will also perform Nov. 13 at the Balboa Theater with his pioneering Los Angeles band, X on a double-bill with Los Lobos.
Other 2025 North Park Music Fest acts include such local favorites as The Schizophonics, Lisa Sanders and Gayle Skidmore. For the first time, the event will feature a custom digital navigator powered by Walkabout, a company headed by North Park resident Tyson McDowell.
11 a.m. Saturday. Various North Park venues. $25. northparkmusicfest.org
Brad Paisley, with Walker Hayes and Avery Anna
The days of filling 20,000-capacity amphitheaters may be behind him, at least for the time being, but Brad Paisley is still a dedicated road dog whose current “Truck Still Works” tour stretches into August.
He is also the only country-music artist I know of who wrote and recorded a song celebrating Barack Obama’s 2008 election (2009’s “Welcome to The Future”) and another song that features a spoken-word age by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy (last year’s “Same Here”). Paisley performed “Same Here” in 2023 in Kyiv’s Mikhailovsky Square and sang it in front of destroyed Russian military equipment.
Yet, while most fans know him best for such memorable hit songs as “Ticks,” “We Danced,” “Whiskey Lullaby” and “American Saturday Night,” Paisley’s greatest strength is as a wonderfully fleet-fingered guitarist.
Or, as he told me in a 2009 San Diego Union-Tribune interview: “I’m a songwriter who plays the guitar and sings, although my first love is the guitar playing, more than the other two things combined.
“I think that’s because the creativity that comes with improvising on the guitar and playing my own leads is a different experience every night. Singing hit songs, there’s only so much you can do to them — as far as changing them around — before people complain. With the guitar playing you can be as creative as you want.”
7:30 p.m. Saturday. Gallagher Square at Petco Park, 899 J Street, San Diego. $79.50. ticketmaster.com
Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival Presents: The 24th Klezmer Summit – Brothers in Harmony
Yale Strom has led the band Hot Pstromi here since 1981. In the decades since then he has established himself as a top-flight violinist and one of the world’s foremost champions, authors and filmmakers on klezmer.
An intensely vibrant, dance-happy Eastern European-bred synthesis — created by itinerant Jewish musicians — klezmer draws from Balkan, Gypsy and Middle Eastern traditions.
Strom has spearheaded the annual San Diego Klezmer Summit concerts, often with a top-level guest artist ing Hot Postromi for a full set. This year’s guest is seven-string guitar virtuoso Vadim Kolpakov.
Born into a Russian family of prominent guitarists goes back three generations, Kolpakov is now based in North Carolina. Also a singer and dancer, he leads multiple bands of his own and has collaborated with such disparate artist as Madonna and the New York Gypsy-punk band Gogol Bordello.
7 p.m. Sunday. First Unitarian Universalist Church, 298 West Arbor Drive, Mission Hills. $30. my.lfjcc.org
