Rockit Festival 2025
The seventh Rockit Festival last Saturday was a blast, once again. It was my third time in Groningen and the lineup was as promising as ever. I started out with a pretty intense performance by Immanuel Wilkins who was just nominated for a Grammy so this was, as he said from the stage, their Grammy nomination party concert. With three guest vocalists and a chef on stage, who cooked some juicy stew with very tasty scents moving through the air, Immanuel and his quartet mainly focused on his last album “Blues Blood”. The table and pans were set up with a mic so that you could actually hear what was going on in the “kitchen” with all of its frying and chopping and boiling. “Mothers teach their children recipes that they learned from their mother, and their mother’s mother, so on and so forth, generating a sensorial and ancestral memory through taste and smell”. That’s what the press release says to “Blues Blood”. And you could tell from the wailing and growling and hollering from the three vocalists that this was indeed a generational and inherited thing going on here. Immanuel’s saxophone was fervent at all times, lyrical as well as religious, stomping as well as healing. A very special performance.
The second performance of the night was an immensely soulful and spiritual show by harpist Brandee Younger. A few years have passed since I last saw her on a sweltering summer night outside in the garden of Berlin’s Gretchen club. This time, Brandee was playing music from her absolutely brilliant “Gadabout Season” LP and together with pianist Allan Mednard and bassist Rashaan Carter (who also produced the album and wrote three songs), she was able to turn the room into some very intimate and meditative studio of sorts. She played an obscure Alice Coltrane tune and some of the most beautiful pieces from her last album, like the slightly roiling “End Means” (yes the harp is not all about sweet and lovely), the soft and tender “BBL”, or the gracious and splendid “Unswept Corners”. She could turn her harp into a guitar-like instrument, into a heavily percussive one and also evoking some bass notes as well. Really dig the title track of her LP as well. Her music does indeed speak volumes. Her tone is so refined, elegant and pristine that it really cries out for more. This performance was clearly the highlight for me at this year’s Rockit.
I also checked out Amsterdam’s own Bnnyhunna, an artist with Ghanaian backgrounds who seamlessly incorporated jazz, soul, neo-soul, Afro, and hip hop into his mix. His show was staged at the main foyer which makes for an extra special location since you’re not confined to a room with four walls but rather an open space where people seemed to be and act much looser than in other venues. That’s where I also saw Reuben James, the UK-based vocalist, keyboardist, and producer who burst onto the scene a couple of years ago with his “Champagne Kisses” LP and who released his sophomore album “Big People Music” earlier this year, with special guests such as Jamie Cullum, Moses Boyd, Emeli Sandé, and Theo Croker. Reuben had a bassist and drummer and played tracks from his most recent album, easily controlling the crowd with his unique melange of soul, jazz, hip hop and what have you. This is certainly an artist to watch out for.
I also checked out singer and guitarist Maya Delilah, who released her Blue Note debut “The Long Way Round” at the end of March. Her sympathetically subdued way of phrasing her own songs such as “Look At The State Of Me Now” or “Maya, Maya, Maya” was clearly a joy to witness. Backed only by bass and keys, Maya’s performance was wonderfully intimate, at times funny, always pretty nuanced and scattered with lots of little bumps and turns to keep it away from becoming too static or monotonous. Her voice sometimes has those wonderful little cracks, almost not audible, but there for the taking. Seattle-born trumpeter Riley Mulherkar was also quiet impressive with his expressive playing on originals such as the driving “Ride Or Die” or a modern, twisting version of “King Porter Stomp”. The only artist I had trouble getting into was Spanish bassist Vincen Garcia. His show consisted of as many notes as could possibly be squeezed into his performance. Once he found his groove, he stopped again changing times and rhythm and thus, making this an altogether uneven set which left me with a lot of question marks. Some of his playing was so incredibly funky, but he always cut everything short as if he wanted to show us what he’s capable of.
Rockit is a festival which deserves to be on everyone’s calendar. With imaginative programming and a cool venue with great individual halls in the heart of the city of beautiful Groningen, make sure to save November 14th, 2026 for the eighth edition.
