Kika In The Bar

   Last weekend, Doralyn and the boys and I headed to Uxbridge, Ontario to stay for a couple of days and help Doralyn's brother, James, celebrate his fiftieth birthday.
   Part of this celebration involved attending the King Henry's Arms pub in Uxbridge and watch James perform along with his band, Fourplay. Fourplay specializes in vintage rock and comprises some very talented performers. The evening itself was billed as James' birthday party.
   As part of the birthday celebration, James' daughter Shakira, aka Kika, and his son, Zoey, got up in front of the audience to play and sing a number. Zoey played the guitar and Kika sang. The song they performed was "The A Team" by Ed Sheeran. If you're not familiar with it (I wasn't) then check it out on You Tube. Their opportunity to showcase their talents came between Fourplay sets. The bar was packed and the crowd had really been rocking, dancing and singing along with the band. When the band stopped, the crowd essentially maintained its boisterousness, completely unaware for the most part that two young performers still had a song to do.


Kika and Zoey in the King Henry's Arms

   In spite of all the noise and lack of attention, Zoey began to play and Kika began to sing. They could barely be heard. I was not surprised, given the nature of small-town bars, that people would just continue on in party mode, in between sets of a rock band. I was however very annoyed at the total lack of respect for the two performers who were trying to do a special song for their Dad on his birthday. I was about thirty seconds away from raising my own voice above the din and telling people to shut up when the reason for this blog post happened.
   Kika's voice took over.
   Her singing got a little louder and, all of the sudden, its pitch and timbre rose above the general cacophony and stopped people. Without any outward admonition that I could hear being directed at it, the crowd ceased its rowdiness and listened to the song being sung. The quieter they got, the more forcefully the song took over.  I found this very gratifying and, honestly, quite magical.
   You need to understand that Kika is a 13 year-old girl. She is tall and willowy and you can imagine that at some point in the not-too-distant future she will be causing havoc in the hearts of young boys. But on a Saturday night in a downstairs bar in Uxbridge, Ontario she was just a mere slip of a girl standing up to a crowd of celebratory, partying drinkers and, in an ephemeral moment, stopping them in their tracks.