SOAS Samba Band

6 foot stomping, fast paced, tight tunes and an encore on top.
Not to mention recognition from the union and student body for the societies achievements. ‘Most excellent music ensomble’ will bring us a guaranteed additional £250 next year. I slipped away with a roaring fever at 2am, but not before receiving an overwhelming number of complements and congratulations for the band, many coming from people I have never met.

This year we’ve shown that a fleeting idea can become a monumentus success, and next year we’ll keep raising the game.

Thank you Sambatage. It’s my last year at SOAS, and in a few days my card won’t even get me through the barriers any more. You’ve all made this year all the more exciting, and truely polished my experience and love for SOAS. Big, big love to all of you.

M.

P.S We’ll have a final email and update here with all the other london bands you can play with, details on where the drums are being stored and how you can access them.

Well, not quite, especially considering out bank building RVC gig was cancelled. However I have just collected the last of the contribution from our wonderful fundraisers. So a big big thank-you to Sara, Billy, Steve and Melsie who all contributed a little time and a lot of trust in myself. They raised us a whopping £200, bringing us just clear of the red the society budget has sat in most of the year. Amazing.

We’ve got some events coming up.
Saturday June 5th: Release carnival and Sambatage ‘day-out’. It’s been proposed that we’ll be foot-loose and fancy free on by June 5th, and could combine the release carnival which we are playing at, with a general day of drum decorating, busking, games, discussion/meetings and celebration. So put it in your diaries. June 5th is Release carnival AND Sambatage day.

Monday June 7th: Official SOAS end of year party. It’s at Egg, it’s the party where people dress smart and resembles something of the other universities end of year balls, except we’re playing, and it’s going to be fat. Consider it our end of year finale, lots of face paint and band colours. We’re badgering Ben to come and give us one last blast, definately not one to miss.

Finally, heres a video from Saturday’s action at the Shell garage on Upper Street. Keep your eyes out for Sambatage players.

Lovely rehearsal on Tuesday evening. It’s amazing to be able to roll straight into a nice tight Samba Reggae 3 after a month away.

Got some thoughts and ideas to put out there. We’ll have another meeting before the year is up, so keep some of this stuff in mind and get your ideas in.
1) Re: Society funds and shopping: We can bag all our 6 surdos, 3 tambs, and 2 heps for just over €500. This would/will be my proposal for the extra funds we will receive from the RVC gig on May 22nd.
2) Next years student union handbook is being drafted up. There is space for contributions and events from societies. I thought it would be nice if we could get 100 words about Sambatage in there. We could debut our lovely logo and maybe plan a workshop/rehearsal in freshers week which we could advertise. How do you feel, anyone fancy knocking something together? Official submissions are to be by the end of June.
3) Society social: Ben has propose a gig somewhere (watching someone else play for a change), the name escapes me, but this would be in early June and could be a nice end to the year. I would also like to propose we combine an afternoon or evening social with some drum decorating and costume making, perhaps around the first week of June, once everyones exams are finished? Suggestions on a postcode please for next weeks rehearsal…

Finally we have a couple of gigs coming up. This saturday is May Day, we’ll be around Parliament Square, the following Friday is Release VI at the Empowering Church, we’re on at 11:30, and then we have the RVC May Ball, and the SDS carnival(?) on June 5th, sign up sheets are being circulated electronically (look at us in the 21st century)

Wonderful, those inclinedl on Saturday.

Rehearsal, Tuesday April 27th, L67, 6pm

We have proposed that the society meets an hour early this week.
There’s a lot to talk about, from Elections, Events and Emails to Summer, Spending and Storage. Ben will coming to teach as usual at 7pm, however please come at 6pm. We have managed to get through the year with brief informal announcements at regular rehearsals but it’s time to put our heads together and pull up something a little more complete. The band is your band, the society is your society and the societies future and finances are yours too.

The weather is well on the way towards summer, and we have a few gigs and a monumental mountain of exams and stress to steam through.
Samba can help. I’ve missed it, I’m sure alot of you have too…. you need to suffer no more. Samba is back.

Get your arms nimble, brush off those beaters and straps. We’re back for term three.

If you weren’t at SOAS on Friday night, you missed history in the making.
If you were at SOAS on Friday night, you saw possibly the largest party the university has ever housed… and you were probably aware of that when you woke with ringing ears, a banging headache and sad sense of nostalgia that it may never happen again.
The JCR will be a different space. I blank canvas for new ideas, imaginations and creativity, and despite some voices of resentment towards the refurb, the JCR will still be SOAS.

A massive thank you to all the SU crew, security, cleaners, performers and anyone in the shadows for putting on such a monumental event. For myself, there coudln’t have been a more fitting send-off to a place and institution which has crawled into every corner of our lives these years.
That thank you rightly extends to Ben, who has been the catalyst and face to our year of samba, and all of you for being the most fantastic band SOAS could have dreamt of. We took the roof off the JCR, and we’ll do it again for many years to come.

It’s not the end. The instruments we have bought with your help will be played for many years to come, and we’ve still another term to bang through with lots of sunny demonstrations before the year is out. We’ll be having elections for next years President/Treasurer/Secretary next term, so have a think if you can spare some of your time and energy to help us continue to grow.

Finally, rehearsal is still on for this Tuesday, L67, 7pm as usual. We’ve got the lovely Kayleigh coming to teach us, so if you’re still in town, get down here and get down with us.

Wowsa!
That was wicked! Hope everyones giving themselves a good (but gentle) pat on the back for their efforts last night. We had every instrument without a broken skin out, and it sounded massive. It was a long slog out there, and it didn’t look like it was ever going to get kicking, but it paid off. Lets have more of this please! Roll on Friday night.

Over £700 was raised for the EDO de commissioners campaign, and I know I had lots of people coming to say how great we sounded, so I’d call that a re’sounding’ success.
Enjoy your headaches and ringing ears.

Sambatagers!

The relentless week of elections is nearly over. You shall no longer have to choke on a swathe of ‘Have you voted!?’ and countless fliers. Tonight we shall have a new Union! The King is dead, long live the King! (bit gendered that one…)

We have gigs approached, and gigs gone!
Big thanks to those that made it down to the Women’s Birth demonstration on Sunday. They brought back the silverware with £40 of crisp notes of the society pot. It’s looking alot better now, and we’re nearly out of deficit!
Another big thanks to those that made it down on Monday for the Womens for Womens demo. Sambatage on CNN and elsewhere across the internet. Well done on bringing home a less impress (but no less important) £3.07 from a quick unofficial busk! Lovely to see more of this!

It would be amazing to get a slightly bigger turn out at some of these gigs. The band sounds friggin’ excellent on a Tuesday evening in L67, so lets take that to the street and move some feet!
Big gig coming up on Saturday the 20th in aid of the Smash EDO campaign and decommissioners. We’re on the line up, so lets get 15+ players down and raise the roof.
Another big gig approaching will be the last night of the SOAS bar. No excuses here. Lets see every instruments out, and send the bar of with a big bang. Virtuial sign up sheets will be going around for both of these shortly.

Finally next Tuesday is not just Sambatage rehearsal time, but also the Misogynist ‘Miss University’ finals at Movida nightclub. We would love to get the band down there after the rehearsal for an hour. So make sure your worl is done and you’re able to samba till 10pm next Tuesday.

See you all shortly!

Big thank you to Fred for last nights session!
Absolutely amazing.
With that goes another big thank you to Ben!
What a legend ;)
And finally a big thank you to all of you lot!
Great turn-out and crowd. Lovely to see lots of smiles and hear lots of laughs. Samba helps us shake off all the horrible stress and pressure of essays, revision, or whatever it may be (I had a particularly bad day yesterday.. before samba that is)

Loads and loads of announcements, most of which consisted of demo’s and gigs we’re invited to play at. Sign up sheets looked a little bare at the end of this, and I had the feeling perhaps there was alittle too much announcement this week. It’s great to try to get the band out to as many events as possible, and I wholeheartedly encourage you to put your name down on those sheets. However Steve suggested that perhaps we should try to focus on specific events, and get a really good turn out at these.
So we’re going to start by plugging this EDO gig. Thats NOT to say the other demos arn’t so important, but there’s only so much myself and Thea can do to try to get turnouts at these, and if your all busy anyway, so is life. The gig is on Saturday March 20th. This is the second to last weekend of term. It is going to be massive, and we want to get a really good Sambatage down there. Please please please mark it in your diaries. We’re going to start sending out a calendar of events with all the society emails, and getting names by drums ASAP…

See you all soon.

Matt

Theas scouring the internet for photos from yesterday’s gig in Piccadilly Circus, and we’ll be putting up as many as we can muster shortly. Check the Facebook page, and the Gallery section of the website for all your pretty mugs.

It was wonderful!
If you didn’t come, your Saturday was not as it could have been. Lots of pink and silver and dancing everywhere, and a really fantastic turnout from the society! It’s so lovely to be able to play with Rhythms, Barking and anyone else with an instrument; truly in the spirit of samba.

On a less positive note, we’ve had a few Samba casualties. Thankfully not of our breathing members, but rather our shiny skinned fellas. We’re currently looking at a broken Surdo Beater, two broken Tam Skins, a dented Hep and a broken Surdo skin. If you waltz your eyes over to the right, you’ll see the society is currentley in deficit. All this damage has come at a bad point, while we are without money from our recent surdo shopping spree. Moreover though, this level of damage has had a few of us wondering whether the current arrangement regarding the borrowing of drums is sustainable.
Until we can all come together at a rehearsal and discuss this at more length, society instruments are ONLY for use by society members in SOAS, at rehearsals or at pre-arranged events confirmed with Thea or Matt before their use.

I’m really sorry to leave it like this, and hopefully we can come to some compromise where the instruments can be used outside rehearsal times safely. We’ll have to have something of a ‘society meeting’.

Hopefully see many of you on Tuesday.
Big Love.

Loving that Ragga beat yesterday.

We’ve got some demo’s coming up, they’re on the ‘Events’ part of the website, and Thea will send emails as they get closer. As Sara said yesterday, there is a vigil outside the SERCO office all this week regarding the recent events at Yarlswood detention centre. Grab a drum and get down there if you can.

This brings me to one of the points from yesterday, which was how do we keep track of instruments at gigs, demo’s etc… Currently we’re asking you to email Matt or Thea if you borrow a drum, with your number, which drum, beaters straps etc… your taking. However I’d love a suggestion on something a little more autonomous.
The drums officially belong to SOAS union. Thats YOUR union and they’re YOUR drums. Of course they’re also worth a huge amount of money (we’ve now spent over £1500 on instruments this year), and making sure they return home safely is important for the society and the union. It would be great if the instruments got as much action as possible, so how can we balance this?

Ideas on a postcard please….

Secondly…. Gigs and demos are coming in quick! Thankfully at a lot of the demo’s we’re able to play with Rhythms or Barking, or other bands that turn out on the day. However this doesn’t mean we really should be looking to get a mestre trained up (heres looking at you Xander), so when those call to arms come, we’re able to get out there regardless.
Thats an aside to the fact that we want to get a good presence out on Friday, and on Saturday. Friday outside the SERCO offices, and Saturday for Reclaim Love in Piccadilly. Emails shall be sent.
We’ve also been asked to play at a benefit gig on March 6th, more on that shortly.

Thirdly, it’s reading week next week (hurrah). Despite the piles of work we will all be putting off, we tried to gage how many people are interested in a rehearsal next week. If it looks like we’ll get 10+ people then we’ll ask Ben to come in, and go ahead as usual, otherwise it will be a week off. Thea will email asking for RSVP’s for this, as it’s a little unfair for us to get Ben to come all the way in, only for 4 of us to turn up ;)

Finally the society funds are going up on the right hand side of this page. It’s currently in the negative. The lovely shiny new Surdo’s we bought last week smashed our budget, and I dipped into my loan to cover the extra. This figure will hopefully go down over the next few weeks as the subs come in, and my loan gradually recovers. However I will also be asking for some help with some of that ‘unconventional’ fund raising we’re so good at, and if anyones interested please email myself or Thea. Theres something in it for you also.

Thats all the rambling from me. Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
Matt