Lekan Babalola’s Sacred Funk 4tet
Thursday 13th March 2025 at The Marr’s Bar, Worcester
Local promoter Music Spoken Here wraps up their Up!Beat series of concerts at The Marr’s Bar, Worcester, on Thursday 13th March with a performance from Lekan Babalola’s Sacred Funk 4tet.
The hugely successful four-part series featuring drummer-led bands started in January, and has seen the Marr’s Bar packed for three incredible young drummers performing with their own bands. First up was Lenny Kravitz’s tour drummer Jas Kayser (28) with her ‘Chums’ band, followed by Louis Hamilton-Foad (21), who is the grandson of the late Birmingham saxophonist and educator Andy Hamilton and son of The Au Pairs guitarist Paul Foad, with Impossible Conversations. The third event took place on 27th February with a performance from Miranda Radford (19) and her quartet, the youngest band to feature on the Music Spoken Here program, which has been running at The Marr’s Bar for almost three years. Radford’s quartet featured BBC Young Jazz Musician 2024 finalist Klara Devlin on trumpet.
The final show in the series features a seasoned veteran of the jazz and world music scene, Nigerian percussionist and composer Lekan Babalola, who has played on two Grammy Award Winning albums (‘Loverly’ by Cassandra Wilson, which won Best Jazz Vocal Album in 2008 and ‘In The Heart Of The Moon’ by Ali Farka Touré, which won Best Traditional World Music Album in 2005).
Lekan Babalola started his career playing in his father’s Yoruba Christian Church and received a cultural and political apprenticeship with the late Fela Kuti. After moving to the UK in 1980, he went on to work with Frankie Valentine, Femi Kuti, Dele Sosimi and has worked extensively with Mississippi-born jazz singer Cassandra Wilson, appearing on three of her albums – ‘Loverly’ (2008), ‘Silver Pony’ (2010) and ‘Another Country’ (2012).
The Sacred Funk 4tet released their ‘Tales From Orisa’ album last year and features Babalola’s wife Kate Luxmoore on clarinet and bass clarinet, along with Josh Vadiveloo on bass and Reuben Reynolds on guitar (both of whom have performed separately with other bands on the Music Spoken Here program). The band delve into a culture and music which, during the Transatlantic slave trade, was exported from West Africa across the New World, leading to an explosion in musical creativity and acting as a foundation for some of the most enduring music genres, including samba in Brazil, and rumba in Cuba.
The show promises to bring The Marr’s Bar to life with an enchanting exploration of ancient Yoruba music from West Africa and vibrant High Life rhythms that blend western jazz melodies and structures with Ghanaian and Nigerian dance band traditions embracing a musical culture that dates back centuries.
Doors open at 8pm and the band will start at 8:30. Entry is free for Music Spoken Here Club Members, whereas non-members are asked to pay what they can on the door. For more information visit the Music Spoken Here website.