A song dedicated to a man shot dead in Somerset last year proved a powerful moment at the Bermuda Folk Club.Rivah, whose real name is Desmond Smith, sang ‘Love You Brother’ at his debut performance at the club last Saturday.Introducing himself as “an artist from the back-a-town”, he said Mr Ferguson was killed in “a case of mistaken identity”.The heartfelt tribute was well received at the Spanish Point Boat Club and sealed an impressive set of songs from Rivah. He opened with a stirring rendition of one of Bob Marley’s most seminal compositions ‘Redemption Song’. Rivah urged the near-capacity audience to “find the Rasta within them”.The guitar-playing singer then produced an unexpected, but delightful, segue between John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ and Jamaican reggae singer Luciano’s ‘Your World and Mine’. It was an inspired coupling as both tunes are built around the theme of imagining a better world.During an evening graced by a number of exceptional performances, Rivah and Joy T Barnum were clear highlights.Ms Barnum is no stranger to the Bermuda Folk Club, but this time she was without her longtime musical collaborator Mike MacPhee, who no longer lives in Bermuda. Mr MacPhee’s accomplished guitar work may have been missing, but talented keyboard player Milton Raposo added a fresh dimension to the songs as Barnum led off with ‘Fiddler’ from her debut underground album ‘Phlegm in Tay’s Closet’.The pair’s second tune was their most striking a cover of Lana Del Rey’s recently released ‘The Blue Jeans’. The song has echoes of Chris Isaak’s hit ‘Wicked Games’, and the combination of Mr Raposo’s electronic piano playing, and the studied emotional delivery of Ms Barnum captured elements of both tracks.When, after four songs, the audience called for an encore, the pair obliged with ‘Celestial’. Ms Barnum effortlessly switched her vocal style from a hypnotic staccato to a rapid-fire monologue and then touched a few operatic notes as a final contrast in the song, penned by Bermuda’s Vejay Steede.Will Black, a regular performer at Hog Penny pub and a member of the rock and roll band ‘Hogfish’, injected a rocking suite of self-penned numbers, including his current single ‘Senorita Ballerina’.A ukulele was the instrument of choice for Mike Hind, who MCs the folk club evenings with an uplifting, likeable vibrancy. He sang and found a masterful segue between Dexy’s Midnight Runners’, ‘Come on Eileen’ and ‘The Wizard of Oz’ track ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’.Folk Club debutant Ishta Nupta also played a ukulele as he sang a poignant and well-observed lament titled ‘Bermuda 78’.Other performers on the night included Mike Cacy, whose songs featured a memorable cover of Taj Mahal’s ‘She Got the Katy’. Alex Rosati presented two original tunes and ended with a confident rendition of Steve Winwood’s ‘Back in the High Life’.The harmonic blend achieved by Dawn Robinson and her sister Mimi is something to savour, and the duo excelled with two film score tracks. The first, from ‘The Twilight Saga’, was Christina Perri’s ‘A Thousand Years’, with Dawn playing keyboard accompaniment. She then switched to guitar for ‘Safe and Sound’, a track sung originally by US country-pop star Taylor Swift for the recently released ‘The Hunger Games’ movie. The sisters’ immaculate harmonies heightened the song’s haunting, ethereal quality.Mike Davis injected a touch of country music into the proceedings, leading off with Lee Brice’s ‘A Woman Like You’, which won plenty of applause.Another warmly received performer was Andrew Westhead, who shone with a fingerpicked rendition of Ralph McTell’s standard ‘Streets of London’.The evening concluded in upbeat mood as Peter Haynes ran through popular singalong numbers, including the Everly Brothers’ ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’.The next Bermuda Folk Club night is May 12 and will feature American blues and folk singer Alice Stuart, a one-time member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention who has toured internationally with the likes of Van Morrison and Joan Baez.