Shakatak

Event information

“This music still glows as brightly as that first hearing…Shakatak aren’t just a band, they were the soundtrack to our lives” RONNIE SCOTT’S House Magazine (UK)
“A wild diversity seldom found anymore… tons of rhythmic and stylistic variety…slamming” JAZZIZ Magazine (USA)

Shakatak have enjoyed a level of success and career longevity, over 40 years, rarely paralleled in contemporary music, but then Shakatak is a particularly unusual group. The nature of their music, means their fan base is far reaching, whilst retaining that “underground” element. This paradox sees the band, who are known primarily as serious jazz/funk musicians, enjoying both high “cult” status, as well as instant recognition as a household name.
After a number of successful top-twenty singles in the UK, the band went on to score unprecedented international success, with the release of the classic ‘Night Birds” album in 1982, the title track now becoming a standard in the popular music repertoire.
This success was repeated with the top-ten hit ‘Down On The Street’ and their Official award-winning video established the band’s personnel of Jill Saward (lead vocals), Bill Sharpe (keys), Keith Winter(guitar), George Anderson (bass) and Roger Odell (drums). With the magic Al Jarreau/Shakatak combination, the group went on to record the track ‘Day by Day’ to further international acclaim.
Along with this successful recording career, Shakatak have firmly established themselves as a vibrant live act, combining astute musicianship with a personable sense of fun, that communicates strongly with their audiences world-wide. Their performance in Japan’s Budoken Hall won them a Silver Award at the Tokyo International Song Festival! Other live concerts of note have been the ‘East meets the West Border’ concert at the time of German re-unification in 1989 and the open air concert in Cape Town for the Millennium Celebrations 2000 where they played in front of 250,000 people. They still regularly fly south and entertained a large audience in South Africa, the back end of 2023.
Their latest album “Across The World’, their 46th was released just last year and is being well received by audiences at their current concerts.
For live performances the band consists of the four original members Bill on keys, Jill on lead vocals, percussion and flute, Roger on drums, George on bass guitar, augmented with a guitarist (currently original member Keith Winter) and a backing vocalist/saxophonist, producing a musically dynamic and entertaining show from the 6 piece line-up.