Live Review

Botown – Jazz Cafe, Camden

• 1st Dec 2010

Botown are a real sign of the times, and not in a “grumpy-old-man-with-a-sigh” kind of way. Their effortless blend of Bollywood with soul, funk, blues – heck, just about any form of jazz you can think of – is tremendously fresh and becoming hugely popular. Following their appearance at Trafalgar Square’s ‘Diwali in the Square’ in October, the ten piece soul extravaganza played to a sell-crowd at London’s renowned venue The Jazz Cafe to an absolutely overjoyed reception.

Seasoned front man and lead guitarist Ajay knows how to work a crowd, interspersing the band’s two hour long set with cheesy yet loveable quips and performing Botown’s classic repertoire with presence and impressive levels of pizzazz. But Botown do not take their music lightly; they are rehearsed to perfection, and as such are able to spend their efforts on injected much appreciated character and personality, whilst the music seems almost to play itself.

Technically Botown is nothing less than spectacular and particular kudos must go to lead vocalist Rekha for her perfectly controlled vocal fluttering, although for a band with so many members to have no weak link is a marvellous and quite uncommon thing, and one which will certainly help them on the well-trodden road to stardom (where else?).

For someone such as myself, whose only experience of Bollywood is from Year 4 music class, Botown have achieved the near impossible in making a completely foreign (in more ways than one) genre of music totally accessible to anybody willing to give it a go, but Botown know who their real fans are: gazing around at the throbbing crowd singing along to every word and partying like it’s 1979, one can’t help but feel excited for the band who, through bringing the fun-loving and earth spirit of Botown and Jazz to music lovers one by one will surely reach the top in no time at all. And I look forward to seeing them there.