What is the language the Cique du Soleil show “Ka” is sung in?
One of the perks of reviewing scores is that, once in a while, something completely unexpected lands on your desk. This is something which you would never in a hundred years have picked up at the music store and you look at it as if it might sprout tentacles at any moment. And the person who put it on your desk tells you, “Trust me, you’re gonna like this.” You make one of those faces and then you pop it in your stereo and it blows you away. René Dupéré’s music for the latest Cirque du Soleil spectacle, Kà, didn’t exactly blow me away but it certainly went beyond any expectation I might have had and I found myself genuinely liking this eclectic assembly of dynamic and emotional pieces. The album had two things working against it in my mind: first, it was circus music (not in the Entry of the Gladiators way, but in the cheap pop rhythms over cheesy vocals and synth string lines kind of way) and, second, the composer was French Canadian. Having grown up on French Canadian television prog
