Bongo lights up a sleepy Wiltshire venue

Venue:

Wiltshire Music Centre, Bradford Upon Avon

Date: 22/02/2025

The weather Gods have blessed us in this last week with a temperature rise from brass monkey zeros to a balmy – for Feb – 13 or 14 degrees. Any kind of physical exercise has gone from being a chilly thing to a sweaty thing.

So when venturing out for a Saturday night gig yesterday, the first of this year for us, it was nice not to have to wrap up in multiple winter layers. And, as I’d expected from a Kanda Bongo Man gig, not having an armful of heavy clothing to worry about was a very good thing indeed.

With an eight-strong band on stage, the evening kicked off with a short vocal performance from Kanda’s young female dancer and singer, decked out in vibrant African fashion and dancing on dangerously lethal looking stilettos. She was briefly introduced – I didn’t catch her name – and it would have helped those of us in the audience who have a less than fluent familiarity with any African languages to have been given some sort of clue about the gist of the song. I’d guess that she was, like the Man himself, singing in Lingala. But no matter, the Bradford Upon Avon audiences are a decent bunch, and the huge proportion of obviously African audience members rook the rest of us along with rousing applause as she brought the song to a close.

Without delay, the arrival of ‘The Legend’ was announced and the familiar be-hatted and smiling vision that is Bongo Kanda, a.k.a. Kanda Bongo Man, strode onto the stage to a huge cheer from the audience. What followed was quite possibly the fastest passing two hours I’ve enjoyed for a long time. We got about half a dozen long and fabulously performed rhumba and soukous numbers with that delirious intertwining of chiming twin-guitar parts, sterling bass work and truly outrageous drumming, four improvising vocalists and constantly infectious evolving rhythms. It was difficult for a chap to retain his composure in the face of these relentless beats and what felt like a joyous wave of sunshine from the stage. Reader, one actually danced.

This guy’s been playing and touring since the late seventies, he’s now seventy years old and still going strong, and commands his super-tight band with a casually imperious familiarity. Basically, they play a number, sing the lyrics, let the guitars speak, sing some more, he gives a signal to the drummer, who twists the syncopation to a new shape, the guitars extemporise some more, they sing some more, they all dance extravagantly while singing and shouting encouragement to us and to each other, the groove is now well established, and they carry on like this until the main man decides he wants to sing another song, and another signal quickly takes us to an end. Dancing audience members now fan their faces with a folded programme, pluck their sweaty T shirts from their pits and ease their aching hips. Then the band are off again, and you get that itch to move once more.

This is PARTY MUSIC in the finest possible style. All that was missing was some palm wine, perhaps some local rum and another couple of hours into the night. Outstanding fun!

The audience:

About fifty percent of the audience were African folk – all decked out in their best, all obviously familiar with the man’s music and delighted to see him and his band in darkest Wiltshire. I’d guess that almost every Congolese person in Bath turned up last night, and boy, they made the evening very special. They didn’t need inviting to invade the front of the stage area and shake their booties to the groove. Infectiously, they soon got a the majority of the audience into things, and by the end there were only the aged and infirm still in their seats, albeit also moving to the grooving.

It made me think..

I do believe that spring has just arrived.

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