Guess what? Today you can breathe a sigh of relief as you'll be pleased
to know this is the penultimate wedding series blog post. Alright,
alright - don't get too excited ;)
Holy Moly's lively dance folk
stylings got everyone nicely warmed up and ready for our headline act
Hannabiell & Midnight Blue.
Personally I would say that the name of this band suggests a sort of
smooth, chilled, sort of jazz outfit, fronted by a female vocalist with a
sultry voice. However they are nothing like that and are in fact an
energetic, all out afro-beat, tribal funk, band fronted by a sassy no-
mess Bostonian out to get the crowd moving. Essentially - they're
flipping awesome!
(Photo by Alan Chun from the Hannabiell.com website)
I first discovered this band at a
friend's African celebration event two or three years ago. At that event
the band's two leading ladies took centre stage, Yilis on the drums and
Hannabiell shifting between drums and a massive bass trombone. Just the
two of them alone made some serious noise and were mightily impressive.
I kind of forgot about them but at some point when organising the acts
their name arose, and after watching some
gig footage of them and their band I quickly got in contact. Luckily for us the band was
available, because they're pretty busy (unsurprisingly given how fab
they are). I found out from one of our guests a few weeks after later,
that our little festival was their third gig of the day - wow!
I'm
not quite sure the crowd knew what to make of them when they first came
on, as Hannabiell's first port of call was to insist that everyone came
closer to the front of the stage. Her bubbly Bostonian tones finally
coaxed everyone to the front.
First the drums kicked in
- these ladies' drumming skills are awe inspiring to watch. Then the
brass from their band mates started and not long after that the trombone
came, followed shortly with a rave whistle to set off the tribal
drumming. By the end of the first song practically everyone was dancing.
I can't remember the last time I danced that energetically, especially in wellies:
Getting
down with tribal sounds, Dave took the opportunity to whip of his tie
and use it as a head band. This combined with his rave inspired
waistcoat and some purple fairy wings, he looked like he'd just stepped
off a carnival float.
It was ace seeing everyone up dancing and having such a great time.
Then
came the icing on the already very tasty cake: after their last song,
Hannabiel announced that she needed volunteers from the audience to help
the band out. Off course she had LOTS of takers including Dave. Each
volunteer was given some kind of percussion instrument and one by one
after Yilis and Hannabiell introduced a beat, each was instructed to
join in with their contribution. Seeing everyone taking part on stage and the audience's surprise was
just fantastic. Even thinking about this now brings a massive smile to
my face. Here's Dave up on stage, concentrating hard to stay in time -
All of our guests absolutely loved them
and for the rest of the night people kept asking me where I'd found them
and how I knew about them.
Its impossible to get an idea of what
this band sound like from my description and the photos alone so I was
over the moon to learn that one of the guests captured some of their set
on film and here it is:
Hope you enjoyed the post. Back next week for the last one.
