Afla Sackey & Afrik Bawantu - Global Beats @ Pizza Express Live, October 24

Walking into what looks like a normal Pizza Express restaurant, a half-smug, half-bemused audience is led past unsuspecting diners to a basement floor, candlelit, with tables surrounding a small stage area. The sheer proximity of the audience members and their pizzas to the stage seemed a bit too close for comfort at first, but as soon as the musicians got going we were wholly engulfed in the energy, virtuosity and sincerity of their performance. Afrik Bawantu and their charismatic and accomplished frontman Afla Sackey played a stellar show, never breaking that electric connection between musician and audience.

The group presented a variety of original songs and covers from highlife sensations, met with murmurs of recognition from Ghanaians in the crowd. One of these was Ebo Taylor’s ‘Love and Hate’. Sackey jovially poked fun at a couple in the front row, expressing that while love is great, but it will kill you in the end. Armed with three congas and a djembé, Sackey made his mastery of his art crystal clear, with mind-boggling solos and strong vocal lines sung in counterpoint with his heavily syncopated drum parts. He performed with what seemed like absolute ease, all the while directing his responsive band with subtle looks and glances, vigorous fist pumps and last-minute yells.

I was going to include a video I took of the event in this review, but on watching it back I realised I ruined it with stifled yelps of excitement and consistent ‘Wooooo!’-ing. Exciting breaks and calls, which consistently flung the audience into the music halfway through the bar, were very impressive and met with cheers. Given the exposure of the musicians, being so close to their audience – you could see the beads of sweat on their brows – very few mistakes, stumbles or lapses in memory were noticeable. This is testament to Sackey as a bandleader and to the professionalism of his musicians. Despite the small, seated nature of the venue Sackey happily encouraged a small group of dancers who had renounced the formal setting, saying: ‘The body is yours, the boogie is yours. Do as you wish with it’.

 A stand-out performance came from Harry Greene on sax, who gave remarkably mature solos on both tenor and baritone saxophone, his fluency in the genre and musical engagement with guitarist Alexios Kraniou (whose solos were characterful and sensitive) and bassist Ofer Wetzler (who provided unfaltering groove and a toothy smile at points of particular excitement) was extremely promising for such a young performer. Louis Pocock gave an impressive performance on the drum kit, simultaneously playing the clave and increasingly intricate replies to Sackey’s complex conga language. Towards the end of the second set (in their nearly two hours of stage time my attention didn’t falter once) Sackey and Pocock improvised a gripping rhythmic conversation, during which I lost the ‘one’ and found it again about a dozen times.

A fantastic performance and dining experience rolled into one, I can’t wait to return to Pizza Express for further performances, and will definitely be attending Afla Sackey’s next London gig! Find out more about Pizza Express Live here and Afrik Bawantu’s next moves (including upcoming recordings!) here and on their socials. This event, as well as the rest of the concerts in the Global Beats series, was dreamed up by Shades of Soul. Find out more about their events here.