Funk Night
Arch Street Tavern
Hartford
July 10, 2024
By the time the band BooYah finished their first song of the evening, the dance floor at Arch Street Tavern was packed with people of all ages. I had come there to see the band, but as the night progressed I found my attention being drawn towards the crowd instead.
The audience wasn’t just grooving along to the music. No, they’d made it to “cutting the rug” status, moving across the floor with reckless abandon.
That’s not a slight against BooYah. The group, which serves as the house band for Arch Street Tavern, is talented. They weren’t simply playing covers of funk hits, but arrangements that displayed the skills of all the members. Each song featured a solo from one of the many performers on stage — from the bassist who stepped forward from the back of the stage to rip a baseline so funky it would have been right at home in any ’70s movie, to the trumpeter who blasted brassy tones throughout the club.
It was more than just the music that made the crowd move though. A true connection between the band and the audience elevated the evening.
These were regulars who were coming to see their favorite band. Members of the crowd fist bumped the performers between songs. They welcomed back the bass player, who had been gone for a few weeks. A feeling of comfort and familiarity that allowed people to relax and let their bodies do what they willed, whether it was the dancers or the performers.
Intellectualizing art can be a stimulating, even fun exercise, as connecting artistic intent and expression to personal context and meaning stretches the self into looking at things from a different perspective. For someone like me, who tends to overthink almost everything, my initial response to art is often to try to understand it.
But at the end of the day, art is also supposed to make you feel something. When you find yourself tapping your foot along to a song, that’s an almost automatic response. Music can go right past the brain and straight into the heart, soul and feet. I try to maintain a certain level of professional detachment when I’m working so that I can evaluate the work I’m viewing objectively. Yet I found myself tapping my foot, then nodding my head, then swaying back and forth. The notebook I was holding in my hands prevented me from breaking out into full dance.
BooYah brought the funk, and the crowd brought the soul to the performance. It was a match made in heaven for a midweek night of fun.
NEXT
BooYah performs every Wednesday at Arch Street Tavern.
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