It was one of those concerts where you want to be alone with the music for a moment. close your eyes Resonate with the flow of this embracing Afrobeatsouljazz. Because why do we love music? Because it takes us along, makes us smart, encourages, speaks to us like a friend. And in concerts, when they’re good like this, we share that with a lot of other people who feel similar to us in those moments. Everyone has their own feelings when Sheila Maurice-Grey launches into a trumpet solo (even the word ‘solo’ sounds wrong for the London musical collective), while at the same time everyone can be drawn into the common. The music says: You are not alone. But you are still with yourself. You only experience that in a concert or in a club, like on Friday evening at the Reeperbahn Festival.
Kokoroko have been playing together for eight years, but only now their debut album “Could We Be More” has been released. And as great as the record is, the pull of their music only fully unfolds when they are performed live. Tobi Adenaike, a bear of a man, plays a light-footed swinging rhythm guitar that oscillates from funky to juju, primed by an oiled triangle of bass, drums and percussion, and disturbed by the striding keyboard beeps, from which Yohan Kedebe but also himself sound of the band can weave cuddly carpets.
The best are the trombonist Ricie Seivwright and the trumpeter and horn player Sheila Maurice-Grey: their cues, as well as their singing, lift the band’s polyrhythmic groove bliss into other spheres. Ok, the JBs and Headhunters come to mind briefly, Return To Forever and Airto Moreira, but of course also the other bands and artists* of the still young London jazz scene, from Nubya Garcia to Shabaka Hutchings. Kokoroko are even more influenced by West African music, and some musicians have Nigerian roots. Her band lettering looks like the one designed by fantasy graphic artist Roger Dean for Osibisa at the time. Don’t know if it’s a conscious reference to the pioneers of British afro-jazz rock in the early ’70s. But probably yes, traditional lines are released and pros are distributed in the London jazz scene.
There were many great concerts at the Reeperbahn Festival. Dan Bejar, who disturbed some in the audience, with his band Destroyer (and bassist John Collins, who was incredibly jiving and mixed massively into the foreground) on the ROLLING STONE night. Or (completely different temperature!) the appearances of Mine and Joy Crookes in the Elphilharmonie. The raging feminist agit-rock of the Petrol Girls or the powerful boom of the rapper Alyona Alyona (of course with a blue and yellow flag) mixed with Ukrainian folk in the Gruenspan.
There was a concert that wrapped its audience warmly and made them vibrate collectively, that of Kokoroko. Significantly, it was also the last one on Friday night.