Here! Photos from the stage of the last two JAMA gigs:
The Birdcage bar:
Harbourside Festival:
Both awesome, Harbourside more so because as we played a thunderstorm rolled in and at the end of our set everyone got annihilated by buckets of water.
So.
Two gigs with JAMA in the last month, and I’m starting to notice a bit of a trend; initially we’re met with quite a cool reception. The first few songs are solidly in “White people playing black music” territory – despite having Senegalese, Indian and French musicians, it isn’t until Cecilia, our much-loved Zimbabwean singer, takes the stage that anyone really starts to loosen up. It never takes more than a few songs for her to get people dancing but what always interests me is how perceptive audiences can be. I saw a band called Future Dub Orchestra at the start of July, and they were a prime example of all the right elements being in place and yet any sense of authenticity was completely missing; it struck me as a band that gets together once every two weeks to rehearse music that one guy writes, then plays wherever this guy books a gig. This is fine but there was no chemistry, no life or energy that made me feel that these people loved what they were doing, and this is something that I think people see in JAMA before Cecilia comes onstage – we are all proficient musicians and well-rehearsed but for the first few numbers we appear lifeless and this is just not okay. I didn’t decide to be a musician to stand onstage and shy away behind a speaker cab, the point of being on a stage is to be seen and heard and engage with everyone watching you, and if you can’t do that then something is very, very wrong.
TL;DR: Don’t be dull when onstage.
Cort C4H! I own it now, I used it to record this:
See you later happy campers.