In Scenester, we spotlight the coolest shows, parties, and events in the City and beyond. It's like you're there, but you don't even have to get dressed. Want us to stop by? Contact Joshua at joshua@gazetteer.co.
On Sunday afternoon, a few thousand people gathered in the sunshine at Stern Grove, drawn in by the gravitational pull of legendary diva Chaka Khan. From the grassy hillside nosebleeds to the thousand-dollar picnic tables, the overarching vibe was one of gratitude to be breathing the same air as her.
A Chaka show feels like a fitting end to this summer’s Stern Grove festival slate, an all-time great whose appeal is far-reaching, generation-crossing, and genre-hopping. Your parents (or grandparents) may have had a copy of Ask Rufus in their record collection, or you may have heard “I’m Every Woman” for the first time in Bridget Jones’ Diary. You may have heard her sampled by Kanye West or Vallejo’s very own SOB x RBE. You very well could have discovered her while watching The Masked Singer. She is an artist whose greatest hits simply exist in this world, like hymns or folk songs.
(A quick aside about Stern Grove: Unless you’re willing to camp out for a good, long while — or drop a couple grand for a reserved table — the odds of getting a halfway-decent view of the stage are a total crapshoot. For example, a span of fifteen minutes could mean the difference between getting to be front and center at Chaka Khan, as a friend did, or standing in a satellite meadow watching a livestream of the show on a big screen, as I did.)
The set drew just about every kind of person you could think of, camped out all over the park: middle-aged parents in startup shirts, young women in athleisure two-pieces and Love Island-esque beachwear, bro-y guys in The Weeknd merch, alt teens in oversized corduroys, tie-dye-clad hippies, TikToking tweens. I even spotted State Senator Scott Wiener as I entered the West Meadow. All of us basked together in the glow of the legend herself. (A spokesperson for Wiener did not respond to an inquiry about his favorite Chaka Khan song.)
An older woman next to me in overalls was, well and truly, dropping it low while giggling with her friends. “We have a conga line planned for ‘I’m Every Woman,’” another woman warned me, midway through the set. “Get ready.” The vibe was immaculate.
The queen of funk’s voice is still — miraculously — one-of-one. Even with some mic-ing woes early in the set, which occasionally left her voice low in the mix for the one-two punch of “Do You Love What You Feel” and “Tell Me Something Good,” her contralto was rich and clear. Her encore cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Everywhere” was divine, taking the original’s starry-eyed charm to the stratosphere. The closing vocal runs in her cover sounded as good as they did on wax. Even in the cheap seats, people leapt from their picnic blankets and lawn chairs to applaud.
In true diva fashion, she belted and swayed across the stage, soaking in the adoration. She blew kisses. She grabbed a notebook from a younger fan at the front of the stage and signed it in between songs. She recalled a conversation she had with Prince where he told her to write a song about God, leading up to a performance of an unreleased track called “I Remember.”
When the hits came, she brought the house down. During “Ain’t Nobody” and the Prince-penned classic “I Feel for You,” she held the mic out to the crowd to let us do some Chaka-raoke. Thankfully, some songs she kept to herself and her backing band; I can’t imagine many people in the crowd could match her vocal feats in a song like “Through the Fire.”
By the time the opening groove of “I’m Every Woman” came around, just about everyone got on their feet to sing along, witness her magic, and give Chaka Khan her proverbial flowers. Really, there was no cheap seat in the house. Shame about the conga line, though, which never did materialize.
