With Lilith Fair, the Talent Shows

Call off the cops. Yes, by all appearances, the Lilith Fair’s policy of gender-bias toward female singer-songwriters was a flagrant violation of Proposition 209. But the test scores are in from Wednesday’s sold-out performance at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, and Lilith earns admission to the roster of touring summer festivals strictly on merit.

It wasn’t gender that most distinguished the newfangled Lilith Fair from its more established, male-dominated rivals on the festival circuit: Lollapalooza, H.O.R.D.E., et al. It was consistency of vocal talent. All the main-stage and key secondary stage singers were either strikingly gifted singers (Lilith founder Sarah McLachlan, Jewel, Paula Cole, Cassandra Wilson) or accomplished and distinctive stylists capable of bringing to life their often exceptional song craft (Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega).

Lilith’s emphasis on the classic verities of good singing and songwriting and skilled, tempered playing gave it a welcome sense of proportion, of fullness without surfeit, that other festivals usually lack. If anything, the seven-hour affair, played to an overwhelmingly female audience, left one wanting more--such as an attempt at collaborative music-making between stars.

McLachlan’s stunning performance as headliner was an act of grace under pressure. Not only was she assuming the anchor lap of the long day’s race, but she isn’t yet as big a commercial force as Chapman or Jewel, the two multi-platinum chart successes on the bill. But her set was like a primer in the classic verities of pop singing: poise, control, clarity, rich emotionalism and vocal sallies that were adventurous but never contrived merely for show.

Songs from her imminent new release, “Surfacing,” went for the big gesture and the big emotional moment at every turn, and she and her sharp band carried it off with power and elegance. Lilith’s 35-show trek could well turn into McLachlan’s coronation procession.

Jewel and Paula Cole were the young contenders, although with a 5-million-selling debut album, it’s hard to think of Jewel as a contender. Her drastically uneven, consistently derivative set suggested that, artistically, she is still more about potential than achievement.

But that is no knock on someone who is all of 23.

She has good influences, loads of confidence and gumption, a fresh, endearing personality and a rich, versatile voice. But she hasn’t proven that she can put it all together in a mature, individual way. She might emerge as her own woman, or she might wind up just a crafty, very popular but artistically insubstantial chameleon, like Billy Joel.

Cole has undisguised diva ambitions and is apparently willing to do almost anything to achieve them, including, on this day, turn up in a purplish belly dancer’s costume. She pushed her powerful voice beyond its limits and into a painful, shrilling zone; she essayed some flights and flutters that veered off course. She bunny-hopped barefoot and posed shamelessly. But she also showed a real spark of intelligence, such as the puppet-like dancing that underscored the sardonic current in her enigmatic hit about female subservience, “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?”

And her overarching theme, a worthy one, was the climb from subservience to independent self-hood. Cole tried nakedly (well, semi-nakedly) to impress, some of her lyrics were heavy-handed, and she gave a presentation that wasn’t classic at all, but totally over-the-top. The thing is, for all her mistakes she was never dull.

Some day she’ll tone it down a bit, but for now there’s a special pleasure in watching a young, developing talent grab for the brass ring with unabashed, if sometimes awkward, intensity.

As a songwriter, Tracy Chapman is one of the great disappointments of the ‘90s. She arrived full-fledged in 1988, with vivid songs capturing desperate lives with quiet urgency. Since then she virtually has abandoned storytelling in favor of idealistic but bland sloganeering about the struggle for peace and harmony. At Lilith, first-album nuggets such as the brilliant “Fast Car” and her better recent stuff (including the warm, glowing ballad “The Promise” and the feisty blues hit “Give Me One Reason”) were enough to carry a satisfying performance.

Suzanne Vega, with her thin voice, had the least to offer in vocal firepower, and the most as a songwriter. Her opening set, accompanied by just a bass player, was full of distinctive, unpredictable themes and points of view and melodies well-tailored to her breathy, narrow voice. In a lineup nearly devoid of musical lightness and humor, Vega created one of the most purely fun moments with her crowd participation number “Tom’s Diner.”

Cassandra Wilson, the top talent on the two small secondary stages, suffered from a poor sound mix and an open-air ambience ill-suited to her intimate jazz-blues-pop mixture, which is designed to weave a mood and draw a listener in.

In the future, the Lilith Fair should do a better job of living up to the entirety of its founding myth. The festival’s title stems from a 2,000-year-old Rabbinic legend, in which Lilith, not Eve, was created as the first woman, but soon ditched Adam because he wanted her to be subservient.

While this bill certainly embodied the tale’s implication of female equality and independence, it would have been better had it also acknowledged and embraced the rest of the story, in which Lilith turns into a very scary bogey-woman. Sounds like a job for a hell-raiser like Courtney Love, or for such fierce, rocking conjurers as Chrissie Hynde and Patti Smith. There’s nothing wrong with a day of lovely singing, but one howler in the bunch couldn’t hurt.