Benguela was formed in 1996 and found it's direction by default. Guitarist Alex Bozas needed some back up for a gig at the folk club and guilt tripped drummer Ross Campbell and double bassist Brydon Bolton into helping out. What happened that evening was largely spur of the moment creation around a few loose ideas due to lack of rehearsal time. 10 years down the line they're still improvising every set, feeding off the audiences energies and evolving spontaneously as they themselves feel the way. "People think of improvised music as Jazz because it has been marketed as Jazz. A lot of performers you can't classify get put into Jazz, but Jazz has a style, rules and common practices, and Jazz musicians improvise within those boundaries. Improvised music - true improvised music goes beyond that. It has no preordained language. It entirely creates it's own form and genre. It just creates, which is beautiful. What's interesting about an improvising band is that everyone in it is changing all the time, listening to new music, seeing new things, experiencing new emotions, developing.. so your perspective on life is changing. And because you're never playing the same chords or singing the same lyrics, you're never acting: it's always a true and immediate expression of who you are." The name 'Benguela' was taken from the cold current running up the West Coast of Southern Africa and reflects both the flowing nature of the music as well as being geographically representative of where the band came together and the climate in which they live. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.