We’ll put up more photos and feedback from SoundBite shortly. On a totally personal note, as I was helping organise the event on Saturday, I didn’t get to see many of the acts but of those few I did see three stand out for very different reasons:
Her father Romeo sang for us last year and this year his daughter Maria sang at the craft market in St James Ave. She stopped everyone in their tracks with her smooth, jazzy singing. Hers is the sort of voice and style of singing that I’d love to listen to late night in a small, intimate venue. A venue like Ronnie Scott’s or perhaps, locally, the Bush Hall in Shepherd’s Bush could work well for her. Catch her here on the video of clips from the music at St James Ave and remember this is where you first saw and heard her. She starts 6 minutes in to the video.
I’d been looking forward to the Bollywood Brass Band all day and was beginning to give up hope that I’d manage to get to Dean Gardens for them but i finally caught their last set at 6pm.
I really enjoy their combination of drumming and brass and their engagement with their audience. You can’t help but feel the energy and joy in their music and that got through to a group of children who got up and danced right in front of the band.
Photo copyright Vivien Boyes
My third highlight was TJ ‘Holyboy’ Johnson who I’d been told about so I made sure I got to Melbourne Ave to catch him closing the music there. I wasn’t disappointed and nor was the crowd who were drawn to his Hendrix-style blues guitar playing and driving voice. I was struck by the cross section of people who, like me, just felt compelled to stand there, soak it up and not miss a minute of his set.
I agree wholeheartedly with your comments about the three acts you mentioned. T J ‘Holyboy’ Johnson really went down a storm. I spent most of my time at the W7EDGE soundstage and really enjoyed the variety of acts on offer with dance groups and rap mingling with regular W7EDGE musicians and, of course, T J himself. It’s amazing that all this talent is out there in our local community and lovely to have the opportunity to celebrate that. We should definitely build on this in the future. People were saying they’d only popped out to go to Sainsbury’s and had stayed for several hours. Also several people said “Why can’t this happen more often?” It was lovely to see such a wide cross section of people all enjoying the day. I’ve put some pics on my Flickr photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/imagesofelsewhere/