Live Review - Melbourne Ska Orchestra

January 28, 2012 – Princes Pier, Port Melbourne

Festival: Piers Festival

The Station and Princes Piers in Port Melbourne are two significant landmarks that rarely get the recognition they deserve.  Having opened in 1954 and 1915 respectively these piers operated as major arrival points for new migrants.  They were the place where thousands of people set foot on Australian soil for the first time, many of whom arrived shortly after the second World War when many displaced Europeans saw Australia as a place where they could start again, safe from a rebuilding and occasionally unstable Europe and free from memories of the past.  These people arrived here and contributed greatly to the cultural diversity that makes Melbourne and Australia such an interesting and unique place to be.  While cultures can clash, they can also provide tremendous opportunities for learning about the world and understanding one another.  And so it is that some very wise people decided that these landmarks, and their role in so many peoples’ lives, should be celebrated with a music, arts and crafts festival.

As with any festival in its first year, it wasn’t perfect.  There were only three stalls for shopping and while the food was good, there wasn’t enough variety to accurately portray the broad variety of cultures that have arrived in Melbourne.  However, the intent of the festival should be praised and they will, no doubt, improve.  But, the real reason I was there was for the music.  All day patrons were treated to a wide variety of musical delights from around the world.  There was traditional music and dancing from Lithuania, Greece, New Zealand (sorry, Aotearoa), The Balkans, Spain, Ethiopia and Turkey, giving a clear indication of just how diverse and rich these cultures are and how they have managed to maintain their identity here in Australia.  But the true highlight of the evening, and the real reason I was there, was the Melbourne Ska Orchestra.

Led by John Butler Trio drummer, Nicky Bomba, Melbourne Ska Orchestra are essentially a cover band.  However, seeing as the majority of the songs they play come from the early 1960s heyday of Jamaican ska, many in the audience don’t know the songs that they’re playing.  But the band’s energy and enthusiasm makes up for the audience’s lack of knowledge and finds a way to make everyone move anyway.

The band entered the pier from Tall Ship Enterprise (a replica of the 1835 ship that brought the first settlers to Melbourne) as Bomba announced their arrival with a megaphone, the brass section dancing and marching behind him as they made their way to the stage.  The crowd, clearly engaged by what was going on, were already becoming infected with the enthusiasm this band displays every time they take the stage.  From there, the band burned through a few tracks from their extensive repertoire gaining more and more dancers as they went on.  They even threw in a traditional Maltese song in order to keep in line with the multicultural purpose of the festival.  By the end of their set, Princes Pier was clearly a party zone with people dancing and smiling everywhere as the huge fireworks display went off over Port Phillip Bay.

I do need to point something out about this band though, because I don’t feel as though I’ve done it justice thus far.  There is a quality to this band that just makes people happy.  Every single person in the crowd had a smile on their face and, at the very least, was bobbing up and down on the spot.  This band has a way of getting inside you and forcing you to move and making you feel damn good about it in the process.  This is party music at its very best and personally, I’d rather this than any top 40 nonsense that’s played so loud that you can’t talk to the person next to you.  This is music for fun and I cannot recommend Melbourne Ska Orchestra highly enough.  Unfortunately, the band plays very few shows due to the various commitments of the different band members (most prominently, Bomba’s role with John Butler Trio) so please, do yourself a favour and keep an eye on their website to see where they’re playing next.  You won’t regret it.