Review: Bristol Harbour Festival 2015

Bristol Harbour Festival Opening Party – Queen Square, Friday 17

And it’s back – the behemoth of all free festivals that sweeps in on the tide to inundate the centre of Bristol for a weekend before washing back out to sea. As is traditional the opening fanfare was a night of party music in Queen Square with a trio of highly distinctive acts playing to a quickly gathering crowd on a splendidly warm and dry summer evening.

Cramming themselves onto the tight-packed stage, the cheerfully unwieldy Bristol Fantasy Orchestra looked like a bunch of fancy-dress party goers passing themselves off as musicians, an impression swiftly dispelled by the immaculate rendition of the Star Trek theme they use as an opener, wavering musical saw and swooning choral vocals catching the piece to perfection. They did a similarly great job on Strawberry Fields Forever and I Am The Walrus – possibly the only performing outfit in the country capable of bringing George Martin’s scores to life. By the time they finished with a stirring party-boogie All Night Long nobody doubted this was a serious musical endeavour, albeit in the cause of having fun.

Trinidadian ex-pat Drew Gonsalves’ Kobo Town were a crowd-pleaser, too, thanks to hard-snapping rhythms that used a reggae underpinning on drum and bass with Gonzales providing more complex calypso-derived guitar chops. Though his songs were mostly observations of social problems in his Caribbean homeland the jaunty melodies, catchy tunes and Drew’s amiable and positive delivery meant they never stopped the party mood in a rapidly filling Queen Square. It was well in keeping with the calypso tradition of spreading news and opinion through disarmingly upbeat music, a point made in his Kaiso Newscast, and other songs recounted social unrest, injustice in the courts and – in Half of the Houses – an ironic recognition that he, too, is part of a younger generation lost to Trinidad in search of better opportunities worldwide.

Sun sets early in Queen Square, thanks to its tall houses and trees, and the air temperature had dropped by the time No Go Stop began their headline set. Happily they purveyed a ridiculously groovy Afrobeat that meant a sea of bobbing heads from the first number onwards, dancing being the obvious way to keep warm. With a three-man percussion team the band achieved a properly intricate rhythm base and their powerhouse horn section, led by Ben Plocki’s imposing bass saxophone, made a fine counterpoint to Marie Lister’s vocals. It’s unusual to have female vocalists in Afrobeat but Marie’s nothing-held-back delivery is entirely right, and their original tunes like Howie Get A Life sat easily alongside a cover of Fela Kuti’s Zombie. The numbers stretched out with some fine solo playing – pretty much everyone in the band is a known jazz musician – and the infectiousness of that groove kept the whole Square moving until it was time to go and watch the light show at Lloyds. All in all, then, a pretty fine start to what promised to be another mighty year for the Bristol Harbour Festival.