Soulsha: Afro-Celtic Funk Soulsha Boston Soulsha is a Boston-based band combining Scottish and West-African traditional music, funk, highlife, and afrobeat. Our name is a reference to the Scots-Gaelic word soillse, meaning a ray of light, elucidation, or “the light that happens.” This 8-piece collective brings together some of the Boston area’s top musicians in (at least) three genres: Scottish, West African, and Funk music. Hip-shatteringly tight grooves laid down by funk-bass master Aaron Bellamy and veteran drummer Pete MacLean provide an irresistibly danceable pedestal for the explosive joyfulness of Scottish dance tunes on Galen Fraser’s fiddle and Elias Alexander’s bagpipes. Add to that Elias’s soulful vocals, percussionist/dancer Nani Agbeli’s virtuosity in traditional Ghanian rhythms, and the giddy pyrotechnics of Neil Pearlman’s improvisation on keys and mandolin, and you have a force of nature on your hands. This is a sound you have never heard before. We bring you blood-pumping arrangements of funky original songs, covers from some of our favourite Scottish and West African musicians, and even traditional Gaelic songs, all riding a maelstrom of high energy rhythms and New Orleans-inspired horn lines (played by Alex Lee-Clark on trumpet, and Dylan Sherry on tenor sax). This band has a mission to reveal the rhythmic, melodic, and spiritual connections between traditional Scottish and traditional West African music, in an idiom updated through the evolutions of Funk, Afro-Beat, Highlife, and New Orleans music. No one will be left unmoved, or seated, as the celebratory exuberance of these diverse cultures unites on stage, reminding us never to forget that we’re all in this together. Get ready for Afro-Celtic Funk Nation! Soulsha: Afro-Celtic Funk’s tracks Isle of Skye Reel by Soulsha: Afro-Celtic Funk published on 2019-04-28T00:28:24Z Fetchal by Soulsha: Afro-Celtic Funk published on 2019-04-28T00:28:22Z