British folk rockers and Grammy Award winners Mumford & Sons visited SA at the end of Jan and we were lucky to be apart of the very first show held in Cape Town at the Grand Parade on Friday, 29 January 2016.
The band is currently travelling the world on their Gentlemen of the Road tour, to promote their latest album, Wilder Mind, which came out in 2015.
Local talents John Wizards, The Very Best and Beatenberg were chosen as the opening acts. It was a perfect summer night in Cape Town and all acts enjoyed a massive crowd as the gates opened early for the first of the 6 sold out shows.
Despite the streams of bad reviews and comments on social media from many concert goers, hating on the long queues and such, this flaw was quickly overlooked when Mumford and Sons took to the stage.
They opened with one of my fave’s “Snake Eyes” which hit like a ton of bricks to the heart, the guitar breakdown had us loosing ourselves. Marcus never missed a note, not even when plunging himself into the crowd during “Ditmas” consequently being chased by a security guard who was clearly very nervous that the crowd would tear him apart. The band went the extra mile, over the top in every way! Marcus played a number of instruments including guitar, drums and mandolin. We were constantly entertained, wowed, singing at the stop of our lungs … they made us laugh, made me cry… tears of joy of course. Classics such as “I Will Wait”, “The Cave” and “Little Lion Man” brought on beautiful singalongs, we put our lighters up and we danced. Songs like ‘White Blank Page” and “Believe” induced emotion from both the band members and the loving crowd. The entire show was authentic and glorious.
Thank you to Hilltop Live for giving us Mumford and Sons! We were honoured to be apart of this event and to be the first crowd to witness the beautiful collaboration with Baaba Maal live on stage. “There will be Time” is available exclusively to SA listeners so make sure to download it here.
[Pics by Demitrie Koutandos, view more here.]
