Kool & the Gang’s long-awaited visit to the Porta Ferrada Festival was short but intense. With an hour and a quarter of frenetic rhythm on stage, the legendary American band did enough on Saturday to move the hooked audience – some 2,500 people – to the best dance floors of the discotheques of the 70s and 80s, their golden age The kings of soul, funk and disco music, still led by Robert Kool Bell – one of the two remaining original members – showed that they are in top form and that, with anthems like Jungle Boogie or Ladies Night, they are able to convert any stage in a ballroom.
For two years, the Girona public had been waiting to be able to reunite with the New Jersey line-up: the Porta Ferrada Festival had already scheduled them for the 2020 edition, which could not be held due to the pandemic, while the last year they fell off the list again due to the restrictions that still prevailed. That’s why the public was expectant and the reception was very warm, since from the first bars of Fresh and Too Hot, the first songs that played, the attendees immediately got up to dance. The band, founded in 1964, is in the middle of a European tour at a bittersweet time, with only Kool and drummer George Brown as the last representatives of the original line-up, following the recent deaths of saxophonists Ronald Bell (2020 ) and Dennis Thomas (2021), the other two remaining founding members.
But Kool & the Gang leave no room for sadness, on the contrary. “Are you ready to party with us?” asked the current singer, Shawn McQuiller, at the start, and the audience’s answer was a unanimous “yes”. The band did not skimp on great hits, and the attendees jumped out of their seats with Take My Heart or Open Sesame, which they accompanied by singing and clapping. Special mention – as always – of the winds, with the incombustible Michael Ray – in the band since 1979 – on trumpet, very well accompanied by Jermaine Bryson on trombone and Louis Van Taylor and Shelley Paul on sax. “We’re very happy to be here with you, we’re sure to have a great night,” predicted McQuiller.
And so it was. Although the audience, halfway through the concert, relaxed and sat down again, it was not for long, as with Let’s go dancing the atmosphere heated up again with a new maelstrom of funk and soul . And it is that, although it is true that Kool & the Gang threw away the formula, with a concert prepared to the millimeter – they did not allow themselves any more license than four words in Spanish to greet the audience -, it is a formula that it has been working for them for almost sixty years.
Towards the final stretch, Get Down on it began to lead the audience towards the climax, which would end in encores – after a spectacular drum solo – with Celebration, their most celebrated song (redundancy worth it). With the audience completely fired up, Kool & the Gang said goodbye to the stage hoping to return soon, and despite the audience giving them a long standing ovation, they did not return to the stage. And the fact is that their schedule is tight, since just yesterday they played in the United Kingdom and tomorrow they are expected in Cerdanya, where the Girona public will have a new opportunity to see them at the Cerdanya Music Festival. And may it be so for many years.