By Lucy Komisar

The place for jazz cabaret at the Avignon OFF is chez Madame Jazz(e), the French-Gabonese chanteuse Abyale Nan Nguema known as Abyale (say A B Al), whose honeyed voice is seductive as she sings the songs made famous by the jazz divas, Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan, Josephine Baker and others. She doesn’t imitate them, she pays homage to them.

For people who don’t know French, “e” at the end of the noun means “feminine.”

Abyale is well known in France and Europe from the 90s for her performances in clubs, concerts, jazz festivals and on albums. Her distinctive warm jazzy voice tells you why. Her pianist-arranger is her son Niels Sem, a terrific even hypnotic jazz musician. (You can hear both on the linked video.)

She is also an author and radio host, and the stories she has collected are the fascinating intros to the women whose songs she sings. A famous one is how Marilyn Monroe got the famous Los Angeles nightclub Mocambo to book Ella Fitzgerald. Numerous accounts say they had hired black singers before, that it wasn’t her race, but that she was overweight and not sexy. Monroe told the owner she would sit in the front row every night and bring her friends. Ella was hired, Marilyn came, and Ella Fitzgerald’s career took off.

But race was an issue. Abyale does one of Billie Holiday’s iconic songs, “Strange Fruit,” written and composed by Abel Meeropol (a communist the U.S. government didn’t like who therefore published his songs under the name Lewis Allan) and recorded by Billie in 1939. Protesting the lynching of blacks, it calls the victims the strange fruit of the poplar trees.

And Abyale does a lyric written by her and her son in “When Billie sings,” about her touring the segregated South.

Stories are not only the intro patter, but also the way Abyale phrases the songs. Storytellers are the best cabaret singers.

Among other favorites are Nina Simone’s “My Baby Just Cares for Me.” And “Birds Flying High, You Know …”  Josephine Baker’s “J’ai deux amours,” Peggy Lee’s “Fever,” and into the moderns adding soul to jazz Tina Turner’s “What’s love got to do with it” and Aretha Franklin’s “Natural woman.”

The theater is an intimate space, just 50 seats, and I wished it had been a real café, with some of the good local Rhône wine! But perhaps I can see her such a venue next time I’m in Paris. Because Abyale belongs on the list of divas she celebrates.

“Madame Jazz(e).” Created and performed by Abyale, pianist-arranger Niels Sem. Ambigu Théâtre, 7 rue de la Bourse, Avignon. July 3 to July 21, 2024.  Runtime 1hr20min. The video. Festival OFF Avignon.