Imagine the setting, you’re at one of the world’s biggest and best festivals, it’s a beautiful summer’s day (or evening depending on what time they are playing) you’re feeling the vibes, you’re living and breathing the atmosphere and you want to soak up some of world’s greatest music in a chilled out environment. What can be better than listening to some of the best instrumentalists out there? Blending jazz, rock, world music, and funk, the group are just instrumentalists, with no vocalists and are absolutely sensational. They are tied to no genre in particular but just simply are a great musical ensemble – a Grammy Award Winning instrumental ensemble from the USA.

Snarky Puppy are led by bassist Michael League and originally formed in 2004 as a ten piece.

According to Wikipedia Snarky Puppy are a international super-band made up of “…a wide-ranging assemblage of musicians known affectionately as ‘The Fam’.” In more than 15 years since its founding, about 40 players have performed in “The Fam” on guitar, bass, keyboards, woodwinds, brass, strings, drums, and percussion, but six of the 10 members on the first studio album The Only Constant remain on the regular roster. Many past and present band members were students at the University of North Texas.

Admittedly, we don’t actually know much about them…yet! But we are willing to learn. We have been spending the last two days listening to their live albums; Live at The Royal Albert Hall and Live at Ground Up Music Festival.

Live at the Royal Albert Hall is their fourteenth album and their first live, in-concert album. They have released live performance albums before but those were recorded with a small audience present in a studio like setting.

Ground Up Festival is a festival where Snarky Puppy headlines the three day event in Miami Beach. It is also artistically directed by Michael League. More info on that in the above link.

We have become quite fascinated by this group and are very keen to catch them live one day. In fact it was my (Hannah) Father in law who recommended them.

Having listened to very little of their music so far, we have every intention to journey to their back catalogue and listen to it all. Their live albums have completely won us over. If you appreciate real musicians who excel at their craft and enjoy music without a vocalist then do check them out. There’s nothing quite like listening to the music sometimes without the distraction of a singer. Some days we just want to listen to multi-instrumentalists do their thing with absolute expertise and just completely chill out in doing so. And I am talking all kinds of instruments, well known ones to ones we haven’t even heard of, crazy cool instruments that produce the greatest sounds.

That being said, they do on occasion have guest vocalists. Jacob Collier being one and we love him so it’s an amazing collaboration. So at Glastonbury they may have some guest vocalists on the odd song.

Snarky Puppy are everything Glastonbury is about. As a festival that celebrates all kinds of music with people who appreciate every style of music, Snarky Puppy will undoubtedly be a highlight of the whole event – this ensemble are surely not to be missed. We’d guess a definite televised slot on BBC/Red Button too so we look forward to hopefully having that to watch.

If you are fans of Snarky Puppy, please give us some recommendations of best albums, tracks, tell us your favourite live shows if you have seen them or anything you think we should know about them.