Very Cool People
(30.11.2002 )
In music, the most important thing is doing. Doing everything with fervour and enthusiasm, honestly and with a clear conscience, as well as you can! (Elvijs Grafcovs)
Very Cool People is an instrumental band playing mainly jazz-funk and fusion music. It was founded in 2007 by guitarist Elvijs Grafcovs and has been active ever since. The band mostly plays its own, original music, which it tries to make accessible and understandable for all audiences.
The band released its debut album, Very Cool People, in June 2009. It was nominated for the “Zelta Mikrofons” Annual Latvian Music Recording Awards in two categories: best instrumental album and best debut. Three years later the band released its second album, Cruising In The Trolley, which was nominated for best jazz album at “Zelta Mikrofons”. In September 2015, Very Cool People released its third album, Funkology, which was the group’s first album to feature singers. It was nominated for best jazz album at the Annual Latvian Music Recording Awards.
In 2017 the band released a CD titled Heya Some Kind of Fish! We Don’t Know The Name Of This Fish In English, But In Latvian It Is Vimbas, which was also published in vinyl at the end of the year. The songs reflect a symbiosis between different music styles that the band members consider fairly closely related: funk, jazz, klezmer, Balkan and Latvian folk music. CD was nominated for best jazz album at “Zelta Mikrofons”
Over the past ten years, Very Cool People have performed over 400 concerts and have taken part in several festivals in Latvia and abroad. The band collaborates with various guest artists, and these projects help to widen each other’s perspectives and make the music even more interesting.
Anete Ašmane © LMIC, 2018