‘Avoid eye contact and do jazz clicking instead,’ Mama Tokus suggests to passersby as they file past heading from Bella’s Field towards the Circus field or in the other direction over Bella’s Bridge.
The challenge for any Crooner’s Corner performer is to capture an audience somehow that perhaps hadn’t intended to take 30 or 40 minutes out of their day to watch jazz standards, which makes audience engagement one of the key skills for a performer here – alongside the obvious vocal requirements.
Tokus’s wry, mildly eccentric, humour helps her here. ‘You’re all box-fresh now…you’re going to be dirty,’ she tells those who are still arriving on site and are passing on their way from the entrance to their desired camping patch. ‘Been to the cash and carry?’ she asks one group of revellers wheeling clingfilm’d crates of booze pass.
Tokus has an infectious energy – and she’s so up for her set that she arrives on stage five minutes early for her set of jazz standards and original songs. I Get A Kick of You captures that enthusiasm and there’s a great version of Ella Fitzgerald’s take on Irving Berlin’s Blue Skies.
On a cover of Sam Butera & The Witnesses French Poodle, she marries her vocal talents and humour and has us all barking and howling like dogs.
Audience participation doesn’t stop there with a few lucky audience members unsuspectingly making their Glastonbury performance debuts as they’re recruited from the crowd to provide Tokus with percussion backing.
‘Keeping it real – 2025,’ she adds.
