Belgrave Music Hall, Leeds 31st July 2024
The backline comes onto stage and set up a sinuous groove with bass, drums, congas and two guitars. A slinky feeling comes over the audience before the senior members arrive to start the tune with a full complement of eight people on stage. With quite some history behind them, Emanyeo “Jagari” Chanda on vocals and Patrick Mwondela on keys take the lead. Alongside them is the group’s Bez, a female practitioner of perpetual motion; mostly supplying visual encouragement, she adds backing vocals sometimes. Mwondela is lugubrious, rarely raising a smile and is the new boy, having not joined the band until 1980! Chanda co-founded the band in the early 70s but left after four years, to return when the band reformed.
So this is a band where the concept is the thing. Purveyors of Zamrock – a fusion of psychedelic rock and African percussion – most of the band arrived after the band reformed in 2012 after a thirty year break and even Patrick and Jagari hadn’t been in the same version of the band. By hewing to the spirit of the enterprise, the band manage to prove themselves worthy heritors of the flame. That means a lot of use of the flange pedal on the guitars, a few rock tropes and an emphasis on keeping the groove going. There’s plenty of dancing and the band keep the percussive impetus moving. There is more African influence here than in the old seventies sound and it is welcome, lifting fairly ordinary rock into something that moves the feet.
Jagari is a chatty front-man, pausing to explain and banter. By about the fourth song he’s introduced each band member and we’ve had a solo each. The beat keeps on, with one song carrying a Santana vibe, another a funky one with wah-wah pedal ‘waka waka’ guitar chops, another with scat vocals from the woman I call ‘Bez’. In essence this is a dance band with a rock veneer and they prove this when the couple of more traditional rock songs are the least successful. There’s a period charm to their old records but for a modern audience, this groove-based music is the winner.
