"This City Has My Heart" - Jeremy Loops and the London African Gospel Choir, live at Battersea Park, London (August 2026)

Jeremy Loops brought the Kirstenbosch summer-concert spirit to Battersea Park, morphing a straw-yellow lawn into a rain-soaked, picnic-powered celebration of South African sound at the start of the summer Bank Holiday weekend.

For a predominantly South African crowd, the organisers understood the assignment. One of the bars was labelled a “shebeen”, fresh boerie rolls sizzled at The Savanna stand, and a blanket-only ring behind the Gold Circle kept camping chairs out, leaving us with a surprisingly good view across the flat field.

Few things felt as ‘Critical As Water’ over this past summer of heatwaves in London. We ate and drank under alternating sunshine and dark clouds, reasonably confident that the skies would grant us one more dry evening. But you know what they say about Bank Holiday weekends and the weather...

The London African Gospel Choir kicked off at 7pm, working through almost all of Paul Simon’s Graceland album, released 40 years and three days earlier. Voices were the obvious attraction, with solo leads rising out of the ensemble before folding back into its harmonies, but the full backing band made the set move and groove.

Bright, hypnotic, syncopated guitars and an elastic rhythm section restored the Afropop energy of the 1986 record while the field tapped its toes, swayed, and continued unpacking dinner. Pass me the dip, please, dear.

Although they were the opening act, the choir endeared themselves enough to the Loops lovers that many of us were on our feet for the enduring Eighties pop hit ‘You Can Call Me Al’.

London African Gospel Choir performing 'You Can Call Me Al', live at Battersea Park, London 2026

Feel good that you got this far

Part Ed Sheeran-style loop architect, part communal bandleader in the Bruce Springsteen mould, Loops felt built for the setting. With darkness having descended over the park, the stage lit up to the gentle strums of ‘Mortal Man’ and ‘Loveblood’. Jeremy was buoyant as ever, backed by a lean band that expanded his one-man loop craft to a communal scale without concealing the machinery.

Early in the set, as drums, bass, and keyboards vamped with a light shuffle behind him, he paused to measure the distance travelled and the scale of that support.

“Tonight is a bit of a celebration for us,” Jeremy said. “One big night together.”

He reminded us that London was the first city the band played after leaving South Africa. “A little tiny venue called The Half Moon in Putney” was the starting point. “We sold 150 tickets, and we felt like the luckiest guys on Earth that we’d done that.”

Now, 10 years later, 5,500 people were looking back at him from a London park - his biggest headline audience outside South Africa.

Loops lingered on what it meant to have mounted the show independently, without major-label support. It made the evening an incredible independent-musician success story: proof that a grassroots community can carry an artist’s music around the world and still show up for a picnic no matter the weather.

It was my third time looping around to one of Jeremy’s concerts, and my first one outdoors, seven years on from the last two. Even knowing there would be plenty of singalongs to come, I was pleasantly surprised to hear a folkified cover of Bruce Springsteen's ‘I’m On Fire’ introduced as a mass vocal warm-up.

It was one of quite a few covers in the 16-song set, which touched all four of Loops’ studio albums, with four tracks apiece from his 2014 debut full-length Trading Change and 2022’s Heard You Got Love.

Taking it right back to the start, ‘Sinner’ returned after apparently dropping out of the set in recent years (it was, Loops told us, the first song he ever wrote). And it was just our luck that, in time-honoured Bank Holiday tradition, the drizzle turned into a downpour during ‘Waves’. Yet it didn’t dampen our spirits - especially not once Motheo Moleko took the mic.

Motheo Moleko and Jeremy Loops, live at Battersea Park, London 2026

Loops’ long-time collaborator made his first appearance during ‘Sugarcane Love’, a languid track dedicated to Durban, perking it up with a rap absent from the Heard You Got Love album version. His easy rapport with Loops gave the song an extra call-and-response charge, opening a meandering route into a cover of Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’.

Loops explained that, while adapting ‘Sugarcane Love’ for touring, he kept dropping its key lower and lower until his bassist pointed out that the vocals and guitar were beginning to resemble Isaak’s Nineties slow-jam. After joking that our parents were probably making love to it back in the day, Loops folkified the cover, letting Moleko “gooi a little freestyle, just because we can”. The band’s saxophonist supplied a sultry solo at the front of the stage, heightening an already surprisingly steamy song choice.

Moleko’s verses also threaded through ‘The Shore’, a socially conscious song introduced as being about Cape Town, while the loops built around them revealed the songbook’s machinery.

Studio polish can hide how integral looping is to Loops’ writing, but live, you watch the components click into place piece by piece. ‘Running Away’, for example, dispensed with guitar entirely, building its low pulse from a bassy beatbox line and harmonica loop before bass and drums joined in.

Jeremy Loops performing 'The Shore', live at Battersea Park, London 2026

The grassroots community had individual faces too. Loops picked out a fan named Diane near the front, who was attending her 50th Jeremy Loops show, and reflected on becoming a dad the previous year, with another loved one to perform for, return home to, and appreciate. The surfer-bro buoyancy remained, but fatherhood had given some of the gratitude extra weight.

A milestone show of this scale was never going to be carried by one voice alone.

Help me with this heavy load

The London African Gospel Choir returned for an initial three-song run, the product of a collaboration only a few hours old. Loops said they had met only earlier that day and rehearsed together once. Nevertheless, their chemistry carried them forward, looping the performers into a shared musical history that traversed Graceland and Loops’ own catalogue.

Across the past five years, Loops has co-written and released two songs with the legendary choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo (‘This Town’ and ‘Coming Home’).

The South African ensemble’s sound draws on isicathamiya, a close-harmony Zulu vocal tradition developed among migrant workers in South Africa’s mines. Their voices gave ‘Homeless’ and the opening of ‘Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes’ some of Graceland’s most distinctive vocal character. Loops’ own music is also built around layering, call-and-response, and communal choruses, so his collaborations with Ladysmith Black Mambazo feel natural and structural rather than merely decorative.

The first LAGC-assisted song was ‘Coming Home’, Loops’ 2025 Ladysmith Black Mambazo co-write from Feathers And Stone. It became a quiet campfire singalong, with Loops and the choir’s musical director, Papa Owura, seated on high stools while singers stood on either side. Acoustic guitar and hushed harmonies remained at its centre.

Jeremy Loops and the London African Gospel Choir performing 'Coming Home', live at Battersea Park, London 2026

Paul Simon’s ‘Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes’ then completed the circle back to the opening set, restoring the rhythmic, elastic Afropop pulse as Princess Kumba Kelly took a stunning solo lead. Finally, LAGC tackled ‘This Town’ - Loops’ 2021 single with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, later included on Heard You Got Love - and pushed the live collaboration towards its most euphoric chorus.

Jeremy Loops and the London African Gospel Choir performing 'This Town', live at Battersea Park, London 2026

After the choir departed, ‘Down South’ offered the clearest proof of Loops’ live method. Numerous pitch-distorted vocal loops emerged one by one before guitar and band joined, like watching a chef assemble from scratch the meal you are about to eat. Moleko’s rap completed one of the night’s biggest singalongs, and with the 10pm noise curfew looming, it seemed like a natural point to close up shop.

Jeremy Loops layers vocal and guitar loops before the band and Motheo Moleko join him for ‘Down South’, live at Battersea Park, London 2026

Not so fast.

Loops joked that, although there were “stricter laws here than back home”, they would try to squeeze in a “little half-song before we get kicked off stage”.

It was a snippet of his recent collaborative cover of ‘Simply The Best’ with Australian folk duo Salt Tree. Recasting Tina Turner’s full-throated anthem as deliberately slow, coffeeshop indie folk was already quite a trick. Toying with the captivated crowd by implying that it might be the final song of the night was simply the cruellest.

Fortunately, what goes around, Loops around.

For one final turn, Jeremy called the choir back onstage for an extended finale of ‘See, I Wrote It For You’. Holding his microphone aloft (“We’re live!”), he captured the choir and audience before looping all our voices into a farewell flourish.

Another time, another place. It's just good to have you here.

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Setlist: Jeremy Loops, live at Battersea Park, London (28 August 2026)

1. Mortal Man

2. Loveblood

3. I’m On Fire (Bruce Springsteen cover)

4. Sinner

5. Waves

6. ’Til I Found You

7. Sugarcane Love

8. Wicked Game (Chris Isaak cover)

9. The Shore

10. Running Away

11. Coming Home (with the London African Gospel Choir)

12. Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes (Paul Simon cover; with the London African Gospel Choir)

13. This Town (with the London African Gospel Choir)

14. Down South

15. Simply The Best (Tina Turner cover)

16. See, I Wrote It For You (with the London African Gospel Choir)

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