Soul meets jazz meets funk at first gigs in over a year
Glasgow Jazz Festival Showcase
Uefa Euro Fanzone Glasgow ✪✪✪✪
Anyone who had been expecting straight-ahead blowing from Glasgow Jazz Festival’s showcase at the Fanzone might have been disappointed, but with munificent sunshine bathing Glasgow Green and audience and performers alike clearly relishing their first live gigs in over a year, no-one was complaining at a programme largely comprising dynamic soul-jazzfunk fusion.
Opening the showcase was the award-winning Kitti, still exhibiting overt Amy Winehouse tropes but combining her own sass with a voice that flexes from throaty holler to sinuous crooning.
Backed by a punchy, guitar-led quartet, she combined her own songs, such as the regretful Maybe, to some well and truly funked up covers such as Norah Jones’s Don’t Know Why and the ever-beguiling Afro Blue.
The soul-jazz nine-piece Cafolla was consistently powerful, fronted by singers Chris Judge, Madaleine Pritchard and Unoma Okudo, with the eponymous Marco Cafolla himself singing from the keyboard.
Numbers from their Cowboys and Africans album included the slick, tempo switching Life That Never Was, the biting funk of Controversy and 1985 emerging urgently from snatches of Cold War broadcast with growly synths, rasping saxophone and Hendrixlike guitar howls, while Ukodo proved particularly impressive amid the heavy drive of I Love Tomorrow.
With a flourish of synth and horns, Glasgow’s answer to Snarky Puppy, jazz-funk-folk fusioneers Fat-suit, opened an exuberant set with a vigorous tenor sax break from Mateusz Sobieski and Mark Scobbie’s beefy drum soloing punctuated by sharp ensemble riffing.
The rich-toned and inventive nine-piece continued with the glowing drawnout horns and limber bass guitar foray of Rumbling, building up to a thunderous joy.
An unhurried drum beat heralded the pastoral No Regrets, featuring Mhairi Marwick’s folky violin, before Kitti joined them for a powerful delivery of Chasing the Crowd – although, on Glasgow Green at least, the crowd was staying contentedly put.