AFRICA OYE! 2006 - Sefton Park Liverpool - 17-8/6/2006

Hurrah for Africa Oye! You know that summer is due when the brochure appears, usually about a week before the event! This year ours arrived in the post, and their website had been up to date for some time, so things seemed to be looking up! The Saturday dawned sunny and warm and we all packed up our picnics and suntan lotions and went in convoy to Sefton Park - even managing to get a good parking speck this time. Walking across what is known locally as the "old farmers field" towards the stage, it was apparent that there were even more stalls, food shops and so on than last year, although the BBC were noticeably absent. A new feature for this year was the camera crew from the Africa Channel - filming the whole event for the tv channel.

The line up for this year was as eclectic as ever - and just over one hour later than scheduled, Cabruera kicked off for Brazil (and that's the closest I'll be getting to mentioning the football World Cup!) Poor Cabruera had to put with a most dreadfully unready sound system for most of their set, but despite this they managed to attract a good size standing crowd - always a good measure at Oye! - with their mix of Brazilian percussion, folk and rock. The lead singer, Arthur Pessoa often played his heavily fx'd acoustic guitar by rubbing the strings with a ballpoint pen - producing something of a trademark sound, a little reminiscent of The Cure perhaps, at other times they reminded me of early Rush! Once the sound was sorted out they sounded great, always very rhythmic and often very rocky, but sometimes very traditional too. The finale saw all 4 group members hammering away on the bank of percussion. Good stuff.

Actually I will just briefly touch on football again for a minute because it was really noticeable that many of the crowd were wearing football shirts - but from all over the world, making for another colourful aspect of the crowd, which is always a great mix, with a good showing of African style dress as well as the usual festival wear!

Even Floppy made an effort, ditching his usual hoody in favour of this designer Africa Look shirt!

Another positive change this year was the huge increase in the number of bikes - Sefton Park has long been one of the centres of Liverpool's cycling routes, but there were bikes everywhere this year - fab!

Mozambique is the home of Eyuphuro - an eight piece band featuring a very laid back African style electric guitar player and a mass of percussion, with a female lead vocalist. The whole act was very clean and polished and had everybody doing lazy dancing in the hot sun - very pleasant indeed.

Nuru Kane came from all over the place - Medina, France and Mali amongst others, and they got a big crowd dancing to their Tinariwen like tunes (desert rock are we calling it nowadays?). Nuru Kane has more traditional instrumentation than Tinariwen's electric line up and they sported some really colourful costumes and draped the equipment with throws and flags from their various homes. Then Bonga (Angola) kept the dancing going through the scorching heat of the afternoon with accordion tunes played over traditional African guitar rhythm's.

After this, a large crowd gathered - in fact it was by our reckoning one of the biggest crowds we've seen at Africa Oye! 40,000 according to the website - that must be over 2 days surely? - in anticipation of the arrival of Luciano and friends. It was well worth the wait - starting with a short showcase by ace saxophonist Dean Fraser which was sooooooooooo good, followed by Andrew Tosh, son of the late great Peter and following very much in his shoes. Great classic style reggae with real heart. And then, Luciano - in his mock military general uniform (why?) and superstar antics played us out - I've written down "no notes, just lots of great stuff" which is what Africa Oye! is all about - great music from all over the world, great weather, friends and a peaceful, happy time in the field, having a dance or a chill or a veggie special from Quinney's.

Day 2 dawned dull and cooler - we're getting used to this pattern of weather and we went prepared for anything - what we got was Cabruera (again) sounding better today, louder and clearer, though being first up they still suffered for a while from a hollow sound quality. These relatively young lads put on a good show, some chanting, some rapping, both over quite a rocky backing, with more ben/guitar antics as previous. By now it was raining (it's day 2 so it must be!) and they played a suitable song "The Rain it Falls" before ending with raucous Brazilian folk songs, just vocals over percussion.

Afel Bocoum from Mali played next - an older looking group than most of Oye's usual fare, but no less good for that, more colourful costumes and a fine line in hats, the 6 piece band consisted of 1 percussive gourd, 3 guitars and 2 traditional string instruments - one of these sounded like a scratchy violin at first, and is in fact bowed with a tiny little bow, but the sound was great Mali desert rock, layered, hypnotic and well suited to yesterday's weather, by the end it was raining quite hard.

Nothing daunted, Omar Pene and band from Senegal soothed us with his soulful voice and some lovely subtle guitar backing. Two percussionists provided a powerhouse behind this music, one of which looked very much to me like Amadou & Miriam's djembe player who we have seen several times this year already and have been very impressed with his style and energy. Omar himself joined in with a tambourine - and a word here too for Omar's very impressive pink getup. One standout song - "Saturday" during which things got really heavy for a while.

Yet more rain followed and the festival was drawn to a close by "Reggaeman Supreme" Tiken Jah Fakoly from Ivory Close - a great set, characterised by a very laid back bass player providing the backbone and a mysterious lead guitar man (dark shades) who seemed to switch from effortless looking playing to mad, frenzied, exciting, leaping playing, and back again at the flick of a switch. While the set wasn't as exciting as the previous day's closer, it was a good'un and there was a good crowd right to the end - at which point the sun came out for a few minutes. Ah well.....

Another great festival from Paul and the team - really they all deserve some major praise for organising this thing year in year out and to an ever higher standard. Africa Oye! 2007 is going to be even better, and goodness only knows what they'll do for 2008 - Liverpool - European Capital of Culture.