Gal Level, "Kom Speel"
These women are being paid to be here, I tried to remind myself. All the beautiful women working at the night club were making me feel intimidated, not to mention underdressed. On the other hand, I was glad that my day job has never required me to dress like a saucy French maid.
I was at this new Windhoek night club called D-Club, where Namibian musicians Gal Level (sometimes called the Destiny's Child of Namibia) were throwing a belated Valentine's Day party. I had spent my actual Valentine's Day thousands of kilometres away from my valentine, doing laundry by hand because I'd run out of money. Romantic. So now here I was on the first Friday night after Valentine's Day, seeing if Gal Level could show me a better time than my laundry.
I was also eager to check out Gal Level, the winner of last year's Female Artist of the Year at last year's NAMA Music Awards, because I had spent some time last year recording guitar parts for their new album at the recording studio. Now that their album was going to be released this month, I wanted to hear the new tracks.
The last time I was at D-Club, it was for Gazza's album release party and it was full of so many partiers that my friends and I got pickpocketed and we'd barely notied it. I was wary of being robbed again at the same place so tonight I showed up carrying almost nothing and storing my cash in Wi11be's breasfteeding bra, which apparently has pockets.
Tonight it was like a completely different club though. D-Club is actually a really trendy classy club, the kind of place you might spot on King Street in Toronto. We had our own white table and white sofa by the VIP section, and our server Dean (not the same Dean) was constantly hovered around us to make sure we were well taken care of and well-watered, compliments of Sula, from Gal Level's Ogopa Butterfly Records who had invited us to the show.
There were also impressively huge platters of fruit skewers and all sorts of cheese. This was awesome because sometimes when I am dancing on the dance floor, I find myself craving cheese. And then I would turn around, and lo and behold, a cheese plate! Then I would go back to dancing.
The opening act featured three bellydancers shimmying it all out to "Jai Ho". They were much better than all of my attempts at my bellydancing lessons. This also only confirmed my suspicion that there was a highly disproportionate number of beautiful women in the club.
Gal Level came on stage around midnight, dressed in gorgeous red floor-length dresses. Opening with their new single "Your Love" (featuring guitar from yours truly), they beseeched all the couples to hit the dance floor, although it actually turned out to be mostly women coming on the dance floor, beautiful women.
They put on a great show, full of coordinated dancing and romantic atmosphere. At one point in the show, Daphne from Gal Level came over to dance with me. It was thrilling to hear my own guitar tracks on their ballad "Missing You", because it made me feel like I was a part of something very cool. It was a pretty sweet way to spend a belated Valentine's Day, even if it was without my valentine.
