SINGAPORE: Nile Rodgers hardly has to think about music playing anymore; he just does it.
Music of the funkiest kind has flowed through the veins of the 63-year-old dreadlocked legend of the industry since he first picked up the guitar as a young man in New York.
When he stepped up to play the headline set of the Neon Lights festival in Singapore on Saturday (Nov 28), every ounce of experience of a man who has shaped generations of popular music came out in force.
"I really don't think about it too much before, maybe half an hour I start to think about playing," he told Channel NewsAsia.
Nile Rodgers says he hardly has to think about playing music anymore. (Photo: Jack Board)
His set, with the band he founded in 1977, Chic, was a transportation back to a golden era of music - a time where the likes of Rodgers shaped disco and the careers of Diana Ross, Sister Sledge and Madonna.
The band played music released before much of the crowd was even born - Duran Duran's Notorious and David Bowie's Let's Dance. Those are the songs which Rodgers composed that gripped the globe, yet still elicited a dance fever on hundreds ready to party.
Chic headlining Singapore's Neon Lights Festival on Saturday. (Photo: Jack Board)
The gig marked another successful return to Asia for Rodgers and Chic, and a further sign of Asian crowds finding their groove.
"It's taken a long time for Asian crowds to get funky, but now they've gotten really funky,” he said. “We played a show in China last year, but not in one of the big cities, like out in the middle of the sticks somewhere and they were really cool.
“It was amazing, we couldn't believe it, they knew all the songs, everybody was dancing so it shows that music really is the universal language."
Chic's Folami belts out a number at Singapore's Neon Lights Festival on Saturday. (Photo: Jack Board)
Rodgers' collaborations with contemporary electronic artists have thrust him back onto these big stages and headline festival slots around the world. His work with French duo Daft Punk produced one of the biggest hits of 2013 - Get Lucky - and with a Chic spin on it. The track was unsurprisingly a crowd favourite at Neon Lights.
"It was not only a big surprise to me that Get Lucky was huge, it was a surprise to them,” he said. “We all thought Lose Yourself to Dance was going to be the record, it was so funky. That's the interesting thing about music - you never know what's going to happen, you never know what the people are going to gravitate towards. You just do your best work and hope that they like it."
His work with Daft Punk, he said, was driven by a cancer diagnosis more than four years ago, and a period of emotional struggle was something that pushed him to keep doing what he loved. "I am now cancer-free," he said with a characteristically big smile on the stage.
The emotional struggle of being diagnosed with cancer drove Nile Rodgers to work with Daft Punk to produce Get Lucky. (Photo: Pichayada Promchertchoo)
The guitarist has continued to work with some of the biggest names of the contemporary electronic scene, a genre he said that echoes the vibe of the disco scene in the 1970s.
"In the last year, I've (worked with) Avicii, Disclosure, Nicky Romero. These guys weren't even born when Madonna's (first) album came out,” he said.
"When I worked with Disclosure and Sam Smith, one brother was 19 years old. It shows that a certain style of music lives on a very interesting way. I mean all music lives on, but I think that '70s dance music has permeated the culture in a very unique way."
Nile Rodgers says the contemporary electronic scene echoes the vibe of the disco scene in the 1970s. (Photo: Jack Board)
Rodgers said he believes that the very distinct and individual nature of Asian music could be transformed by the electronic genre, meaning new sounds could be shared and embraced further across borders.
"One thing I find different about Asia is that typically one country's popular musician doesn't translate to another Asian country's popular musician. That's interesting," he said.
"Electronic dance music can change that because so much of it is groove-based and the hooks are simple so you don't have to worry about language barriers, you don't have to worry about culture, that's a good thing. It's very much like disco."
Chic's Kim Davis serenades the crowd at the Neon Lights Festival on Saturday. (Photo: Pichayada Promchertchoo)
It could be an opportunity for local artists to springboard their careers to wider audiences, but Rodgers explained that a love of music, not a dream of fame needed to be the driver behind any budding musician's ambitions.
"You must embrace failure, absolutely must embrace it," he said. "The odds of making it and the odds of living as a professional musician are incredibly low. You have to love the process of making the music, that's your reward."
As he stood warming up the crowd, posing for selfies and meeting eager fans, Rodgers was most certainly embracing the love; indeed he has experienced few failures over a glittering career. Making people dance and smile has been his passion for decades.
"I love people. I don't know if I was born with it. I'm extremely curious about people and culture," he said.
"Every place I go, I want to talk to people, figure out what their likes are and dislikes are and I know everybody's an individual but I get a great sense of where people are coming from. The woman who picked me up at the airport, she gave me a fantastic history lesson on Singapore, it was great and I was grilling her all the way to the hotel. ‘What's your family? What's your religion?’”
Rodgers said he believes Singapore had found its funk and fun. As dozens of local fans swarmed Chic's stage for the finale of their festival showing for the timeless hit Good Times, he may have just proven himself right once again.
- CNA/ek