An excellent evening of afro-pop
First - I’m not dead, I just play a corpse on TV. It’s just been super busy, blah, blah, blah, and blogging fell off the radar for a bit.
I’ll try to get back on the wagon again, however, starting with a brief report of some fine live music that Sub-Evil Boy and I enjoyed tonight at the Colchester Arts Centre (a deconsecrated church - see some photos on Flickr). The band Afro-Tema played tonight as part of Black History Month here in Colchester, and it was a smoking evening. Most of the show was long afro-pop jams, but with reggae and even latin songs thrown in here and there to mix things up. It was a five person outfit, with the leader and vocalist on keyboards and occasionally percussion, a fine and solid rhythm section (the drummer is gonna be one tired puppy), and excellent guitarist and sax/flute players providing most of the melodic structure.
The audience was surprisingly (to me) middle-aged (uh, something about pots and kettles?) and I was really worried that they were going to sit there and politely watch all night. The third song, however, was a reggae number, and that brought all kinds of people out of their chairs and up front, and the dance area was packed from then on. Sub-Evil has a very fun time at what was probably his first “grown up” club show, although the lateness of the hour did eventually catch up with us, and we left during a break. He got a cool idea for a song during a latin piece, though, so prepare yourselves for another wacky masterpiece!
The (former) church on the left in the photo below is the Colchester Arts Centre. I think the guy on the left is part of the running of the Centre; I’ve certainly seen him there on multiple occasions.
October 29th, 2007 at 14:29
Funny! I tune in to check out your blog and what am I listening to? AfroCelt Sound System. Freaky!
Glad you guys had a good time. Sounds like a hoot!