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Review: Afro Celt Sound System, Colston Hall
Afro Celt Sound System begin their night with a haunting Celtic/African lament and end it with a rousing international ceilidh.
The large vocals of Rioghnach Connolly from County Antrim start the proceedings with Calling in The Horses and the whole panoply of their Afro/Celtic fusion comes to the brim an hour and half later with the sheer energy of Whirly 2.
Showcasing material old and new but with a hefty dash of songs from their new album The Source, the Afro Celts bring a seamless interlocking of Celtic airs, African dance and chants, Highland bagpipes, Irish reels and flutes into a giddyingly ecstatic whole.
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The kora playing and high sweet vocals of N’Faly Kouyate from Guinea, extravagantly dressed in a high collar robe of his country, meld with the Scottish bagpipes and Irish Uillean pipes of new member Griogair Labhruidh and the Indian bhangra dhol drums of Johnny Kalsi and his son Kalsi Junior. Add to this the fiddle of Ewen Henderson, the innovative bodhran of Robbie Harris and the rest of the crew masterminded by their founder, guitarist Simon Emerson, and it’s a mash-up made in heaven.
Griogair even introduces a new element to their eclectic dynamism – Gaelic hip-hop, which fits in perfectly alongside the jazz bagpipes and rhythms ricocheting brilliantly from one continent to the next, emphasising the closeness and complimentary strengths of the musical traditions.
There are also the electronic dance touches which have always brought that heady element to the Afros sound, but the music is so enriched by everything else around that it exists on an altogether deeper plain.
This superbly potent potpourri brewed up by the Afro Celts filled the aisles with the gyrating masses. How could it not?
Photographs by Elfyn Griffith