A terrace turning fifty and a voice that does not age: Grace Jones performed at Glitterbox in Amnesia

Grace Jones gave a live performance on the Amnesia terrace on Friday 24 July, as part of the Glitterbox season. British music titles carried footage from the night: DJ Mag filmed her singing "Pull Up To The Bumper", and Mixmag called her appearance a special one.

The performance was announced by Glitterbox and Amnesia back on 3 June.

This is the first season Glitterbox has run at Amnesia, and it lands in the club's fiftieth year. The party takes over one of the world's best-known club terraces every Friday from 15 May to 9 October: twenty-two weeks in a row.

"A musician, fashion revolutionary, club culture pioneer and symbol of fearless self-expression who lives in the very DNA of Glitterbox, Grace Jones is one of the most influential and enduring artists of the last five decades," Glitterbox wrote when announcing the date.

Why here of all places

Glitterbox is built on disco, house and a cult of the voice — and Jones is not a guest from another genre here, she is a source. Her records of the late seventies and eighties stitched disco, funk, new wave and pop into something that still has no genre name, and the image itself — shaved head, sculptural lines, a complete absence of any wish to imitate anyone — became club culture's working model of what freedom looks like.

The season she landed in is assembled on exactly that principle. Behind the decks are David Morales, Dimitri From Paris, Basement Jaxx and The Shapeshifters, alongside Honey Dijon, Masters At Work, Todd Terry, Armand Van Helden, Derrick Carter, Carl Craig, Moodymann, Dave Lee, Jayda G and Folamour.

What is still to come before October

The same announcement named one more live act: Jorja Smith will sing at the closing party on 9 October. The season's Friday pre-parties are again run with Café Mambo.

Jones's set was neither streamed nor released as a recording — what remains are phone clips from the terrace and the few videos the magazines shot. That is how club memory works: an event exists exactly as long as somebody who was there decides to retell it.

As reported earlier by ONE//FM, Honey Dijon — one of the DJs playing this Glitterbox season — built her own night at London's Tate Modern last winter.