‘VARIOUS ARTISTS’ – ‘LOVE SUPREME’, GLYNDE PLACE, GLYNDE 1.7.23
Europe’s biggest outdoor jazz festival ‘Love Supreme’ returned to the beautiful countryside setting of Glynde Place in the South Downs from June 30th – July 2nd 2023 for its 10th anniversary. The annual three day Love Supreme Jazz Festival highlights the best of Jazz, Funk, Soul and Blues.
This year’s event included headline shows from Little Simz and Grace Jones. Also on the line-up for the acclaimed three-day festival were UK artists Emeli Sandé, Pip Millett, Greentea Peng and Courtney Pine. Other artists such Candi Staton, Shalamar, Gabriels, Tower Of Power, Jazzmeia Horn, Marcus Miller and Thundercat, to name a few, arrived from different parts of the world adding a global perspective to the festival.
There were too many acts to cover in just one article, so we have split them up in date order. This article refers to artists who were covered only on Saturday 1st July. Part 1 on the acts that performed on Friday 30th June can be found HERE and Part 3 on the acts that performed on Sunday 2nd July HERE.
So here goes, sit back and enjoy…
Saturday 1st July:
The sun was shining for the second day of the Love Supreme Festival, after the rain of the opening day. Unsurprisingly there was a much larger crowd at the weekend proper, and wider age range. The Love Supreme festival had a laid-back family feel, with three generations of a family being a common sight. Many of the younger children were sensibly wearing ear defenders. While this worked for watching the music, it did have some amusing consequences, if their parents didn’t take them off in between shows. A few times parents were seen calling after their young children, who couldn’t (or pretended not to) hear them in their ear defenders.
JAZZMEIA HORN
SUPREME STANDARDS STAGE 3:30pm – 4:30pm
Three-time Grammy nominated US vocalist Jazzmeia Horn was the first artist I saw on the second day of the Love Supreme festival. Jazzmeia had a great voice, most notably reaching the high notes with ease. Jazzmeia explained that jazz music can lift your spirits, asking the audience “Hands up who’s happy? Hands up who’s sad? You need to come to the front.” A little different from the typical “Love Supreme, how are you feeling” from most artists over the weekend. She was keen to spread a spiritual message, referencing the scriptures at one point. Her band was musically very tight. During one instrumental section in Jazzmeia’s set, the double bass player gave a look to the pianist, smiling as if to say, “Play faster. I can keep up with you.”
INCOGNITO
NORTH DOWNS STAGE 4:00pm – 5:00pm
Next up was Incognito on the main stage. Incognito is a British acid jazz band led by Jean-Paul “Bluey” Maunick. One of the notable features of Incognito’s performance was the wonderful soulful vocals from Cherri V, Natalie Duncan and Tony Momrelle, either in harmonies or when they each took turns on lead vocals. They also got many in the audience to sing along with them. Incognito’s happy acid-jazz, soulful sound fitted perfectly with the Saturday afternoon sunshine. Good bass lines, funky guitars and good percussion including congo drums gave a party feel to the band’s sound.
COURTNEY PINE
SOUTH DOWNS STAGE 5:00pm – 6:00pm
On the South Downs Stage was one of the most celebrated British jazz musicians of all time, Courtney Pine. Decked in colours of the Jamaican flag, Courtney came on stage to a huge cheer, and being the celebrated multi-instrumentalist that he is he played clarinet and bass clarinet at Love Supreme. It wasn’t just a legend solo show. There was a real sense of togetherness to the band’s sound, with everybody making a significant contribution. Courtney Pine opened with a mellow number, the upbeat second song featured the steel drums more prominently. The steel drums added a Caribbean carnival feel. The double bass player was one of the best over the whole weekend. Courtney Pine was very keen on audience participation. As there was no vocalist on stage, he solved this by getting the crowd to sing “Love Supreme” along with the musicians. The audience didn’t need any encouragement from Courtney to clap along to the music.
GREENTEA PENG
NORTH DOWNS STAGE 5:45pm – 6:45pm
Bermondsey’s Greentea Peng (real name Aria Wells) was next on the main stage. The South London neo-soul star Greentea took to the North Downs Stage in a colourful outfit and a large new hat, which she had bought on way to Glynde. There was a certain swagger about her presence as she walked around stage singing. During her performance Greentea built hazy soundscapes and spiritual anthems. Her soundscapes weren’t just funky and soulful, but pulled in influences from different genres giving a rockier feel to her soul sound. Her breezy, hypnotic vocals matched her music very well. Arguably some songs her vocals were closer to rapping. Greentea had a very good set of musicians on stage with her. On the upbeat dance parts the guitars and drums lead; while the keyboards seemed to lead on the relatively slower parts. The guitarist created a rather unique sound using the slide up to vary the notes as he was playing them. It was a very good and varied set which deserved the good reception it got from the crowd.
MARCUS MILLER
SOUTH DOWNS STAGE 6:45pm – 8:00pm
Next was a quick walk across the festival site to the South Downs Stage for highly recognized jazz bassist, Marcus Miller, who rose to prominence as a member of Miles Davis’s band in the 1980s. New Yorker Marcus Miller’s bass playing style covered both funk and contemporary jazz and included many fluid chops, slaps and pops. There was no doubting the quality of Marcus Miller’s bass playing. However, his set didn’t have the variety of many other performances over the weekend. During the set there were several people coming and going from the South Down tent, and only staying for a few songs.
SHALAMAR
SOUTH DOWNS STAGE 8:45pm – 10:00pm
Multi-million-selling, Grammy-winning American soul group Shalamar came to Love Supreme 2023 celebrating their 40th anniversary. The crowd in the South Down tent were very excited, even echoing the “1, 2, 3” sound check testing. Overall Love Supreme kept very tightly to the schedule over the weekend, but there was a quarter of an hour delay to Shalamar’s set. There also seemed like a false start on the intro tape, when the band were due on stage. Shalamar opened their set with ‘Friends’, which was an 8 minute version. Unfortunately, there were technical issues early in Shalamar’s set with whistling feedback. The stage was very dark, just lit by red backlighting.
Shalamar gave a lesson in stagecraft and how to engage the audience. The singers moved to sides of the stage and sang to those areas of the crowd, as well as those directly in front of centre stage. As you would expect there were the familiar, almost trademarked, Shalamar disco funky basslines. Each vocal and musical solo was greeted with a cheer. The three main singers synchronised their dance steps as they sang. (Although the two backing singers’ moves were more in sync.) Right to the very back of the South Downs tent, and even outside the tent, people were dancing to their favourite Shalamar hits.
Due to the overlap on the scheduling, I had to leave Shalamar to catch the headliner Little Simz on the main North Downs stage. Many people did say that Shalamar’s set and the sound quality improved as it went on.
LITTLE SIMZ
NORTH DOWNS STAGE 9:25pm – 10:55pm
Headlining Saturday night at Love Supreme was Mercury Prize, Ivor Novello and Brit Award-winning UK rapper Little Simz (real name Simbiatu Ajikawo). Little Simz was very different to all the other artists at Love Supreme with her urban hip hop. Walking across from the South Down Stage to the North Downs Stage I could hear Little Simz’s set had started with her powerful sound and booming bass before I had even got to the helter-skelter and fairground between the stages. Even from way back, the backdrop imagery was eye-catching with simple but striking animated silhouettes of dancers.
Little Simz gave a very energetic performance. Before one song she asked, “Can I try something new? It’ll only work, if you give 110% energy.” Literally when Little Simz asked the crowd to jump, many did so.
As an observation there did appear to be a generational split between the two stages, with older people at Shalamar and younger people at Little Simz. About 35 minutes into the Little Simz set, the crowd grew as people came across from the other stage. From comments I heard the newcomers were pleasantly impressed by Little Simz’s show.
There were many special moments within Little Simz’s performance. The track ‘Gorilla’ from her latest album ‘NO THANK YOU’ was one of those. Its powerful cinematic intro grabbed everybody’s attention as did the rap with minimal accompaniment. When Little Simz asked “Do you want some more songs? Do you want more dancing?”, the answer was obvious. The songs that followed were mellower, but with a great dance beat. I was impressed with how well Little Simz’s vocals worked on powerful hip hop songs, rapping and the slower numbers.
For somebody who has played to large sell-out crowds (she’s the first female to sell out three headline shows at the Brixton Academy and is playing two nights at Alexandra Palace in November), Little Simz remains humble and recognises where she has come from. Before her final song, she took a moment to reflect “To think of me from North London playing the headline slot here.”
Little Simz left the stage, saying “Thank you. See you soon.” Judging by the Love Supreme audience’s reaction, many would happily see Little Simz play again soon. As the two guitarists on stage with Little Simz took a bow, many expected and hoped they would come back on stage. There was no encore, but nobody could say that meant they were short changed. This performance was amazing, and my highlight of the whole festival. The word “charismatic” was heard a lot from people after her performance, and rightly so.
The great experience of the second day at Love Supreme was tainted by Southern Rail cancelling the last train from Glynde. Poor mobile and Wi-Fi coverage at the festival venue, Glynde Place, meant that the notification on the Love Supreme app was not picked up until long after leaving the site. Many other festival goers travelling by train walked to the village, before turning around to make their way back along the unlit country road to the site’s north entrance to queue for the festival buses to Brighton or Lewes. Although there was some confusion between stewards about the arrangements, the staff on duty on Saturday night did a good job getting the people onto the buses and on the road home. Ironically the sight on the buses arriving back at the site was greeted with a cheer almost as big as some artists received earlier in the day!
Links to the reviews of Friday at the Love Supreme weekend will appear HERE and Sunday HERE.
Love Supreme will be returning to Glynde on Friday 5th to Sunday 7th July 2024. You can find more information HERE.
