Dani Klein
Singer
The story began two decades ago with a voice - Dani Klein’s voice, the voice of Vaya Con Dios. Vaya Con Dios wasn’t the first introduction to Dani Klein. Back in the mid-Eighties, you could hear her singing on commercials, in bars, on the stage, as the vocalist for indie heroes Arbeid Adelt. But she didn’t take her place in the spotlight until she formed Vaya with bassist Dirk Schoufs and guitarist Willy Lambregt. There was no five-year plan. Just the maverick urge of three musical magpies to riff on the sounds they loved - and to see what happened when you mixed rock with Latin rhythms or blues or flamenco or chanson or…Vaya soared into the stratosphere. No surprise there. In the Eighties, ‘mainstream’ mainly meant ‘soulless’. Singles like Just a Friend of Mine, Puerto Rico, Johnny and Don’t Cry for Louie were like lifebelts to those longing for music of colour and passion and flair and heart and, of course, soul. If the music made people do a double take, so did the first time they saw Dani on TV. Her voice sounded like it belonged to a Delta blueswoman or a Detroit diva. Not a down-to-earth woman from Brussels.By now, that down-to-earth woman from Brussels was a big name around the world. Vaya were selling millions, scaling dizzy heights with the 1990 album Night Owls and smash hits like Nah Neh Nah and What’s a Woman? But all was not well behind the scenes. The group started imploding under the pressures of fame.
Devastated, Dani didn’t drop Vaya but went on as a one-woman-show. The melancholic Time Flies and velvety Roots & Wings albums followed. But by the mid-Nineties Dani felt smothered by the limelight. Exhausted, she stepped out of that hothouse. Shunned it. Decided to find herself. Over the next few years she devoted herself to making up for lost time with friends and family she’d barely seen for a decade. She travelled the world, finally visiting the places she’d only managed to glimpse on tour, bought a house in Andalusia, studied psychoanalysis, philosophy and literature, even going to university.
Eventually the ache to create music returned. In 1999 Dani and four musician pals began jamming together and recorded the results as Purple Prose, an album of quiet, low-key beauty. Five years later, once again as Vaya Con Dios, she made The Promise, all summery loveliness, especially the glorious Je l’aime, Je l’aime and Don’t Deny. It’s the work of an artist at the peak of her creative powers.
On top of that, Dani duets with US soul veteran Aaron Neville on an astonishing re-make of What’s A Woman? There’s also a tremendous DVD of an acoustic concert that Dani performed in Brussels in August 2006- Vaya unplugged, if you like - a World Premiere performance. All in all, The Ultimate Collection traces the story of one of Belgium’s biggest ever acts and their adventures in music, all the way from ‘back when’ to here and now.
