Oka Vanga consists of Angela Meyers, originally from South Africa, (whom we assume is responsible for the band name, which is a play on a Botswanan river delta) and Londoner William Cox. Together, they have this pretty aural potpourri of styles and sounds that grows more infectious as time passes easily listening to it.
While Meyers sings in a fluctuating style to suit the piece, Cox is busy filling the sound with mandolin, ukulele, and percussion with John Parker on bass, and beautiful strings by Patsy Reid. The overall sound is quite infectious and joyful.
Beginning with the fiddle rich ‘Beneath The Apple Tree’, you are drawn in by the warm sounds and old-time charm of the song. It’s surprising to find that this, and seven of the others, are originals mostly by Meyer and not staples from a folk songbook.
Images of nature and birds abound, as the music takes flight. The lyrics only add to the pastoral nature of the music:
I want to dance with you to a song we can sing. Load our dreams, tied with lovers’ strings. I wanna hold your hand beneath the apple tree.
One could easily be transported back to spring days and freer times, before rules of six or four, bubbles and social distancing. Albums like this are a reminder of better days ahead.
Six of the ten tracks were recorded before the worst excesses of the pandemic struck. Angie and Will renovated their spare room into a makeshift recording room and completed the album.
Celtic influences abound but others too are more subtle aided by Angela’s graceful and adaptive vocals. There are points on ‘Bluebird’ when she sounds uncannily like Rickie Lee Jones at her most endearing, and yet on ‘Bows Of Yew’, you are transported back to the 60s folk clubs; so pure is the sound. There is a bounce to the music and an evident joie de vivre that comes through on the speakers. It easily passes the ‘foot tap’ test.
There’s a lightness to the playing and great interplay between the two, particularly evident on ‘Tenpenny Bit And The Crooked Crow’. Their love of the music they create is quite evident and shows on the taster video for ‘Beneath The Apple Tree’.
Stand-out tracks for me are the aforementioned ‘Bluebird’ and closer ‘The Cuckoo’ but there’s not a bad track here.