Review: Bongo Ball

Bongo Ball is a firm favourite amongst the seasoned ball attendees of St Andrews, and for good reason: this unique fixture on the social calendar is held in a venue other than Kinkell (finally) and with a dress code that encourages attendees to spice up their outfits. The ball was originally set up to support to Xavier Project, a charity for which it now raises over £9000 per year. Arriving to Crail airfield at 6:30 on the committee bus, I was treated to one of the first glimpses of the hard work and organisation that had been put into Bongo Ball: the venue was done up beautifully, having been transformed from a fairly decrepit, disused building to a colourful, vibrant dancehall, complete with powerful sound systems and lighting.

The event took a little longer to get started than anticipated, due to bus issues (and one over-enthusiastic reveller who up-chucked on the 7:15pm bus – solid effort, my fresher friend), which meant half of the guests were there at 7:45, with the other half not turning up til after 9. Guests managed to overlook the tardiness once they were presented with 2 free drinks tokens and, (more importantly?) a token for one free portion of chips. Once guests arrived, they were greeted with the full Bongo Ball set up, which consisted of the main warehouse-esque building, as well as a separate marquee, a comfortably-furnished shisha tent and a huge bonfire to warm those chilly exposed limbs. The audio delights that Bongo Ball had on offer this year included Tudor Lion, Channel One Soundsystem, Kry Wolf and Klose One, who were not only brilliant, engaging performers, they were also unique and well-suited to the theme of Bongo Ball.

Lastly, one cannot ignore the organisers of Bongo Ball setting the drinks prices to be the lowest found at any ball in St Andrews, allowing Bongoers to have their fill of £1 Jaeger shots without feeling ripped off, as is often the general feeling at balls.

Poor luck and miserable British weather resulted in the skies opening midway through the night and soaking revellers outside for a breath of fresh air, which wasn’t a game-changer until the electricity failed. This meant that for twenty minutes, both the building and the marquee were left without music or lighting, which put a real dampener (excuse the pun) on the night. The power problem seemed to be remedied for the duration of a couple of bass-heavy tunes, but then it proceeded to plunge partygoers back into silence and uncomfortably bright emergency lights for another half an hour. Despite the giving up of several less-enthusiastic Bongo-ers, the electricity was restored with replenished gusto and survived for the rest of the night. Overall, a great performance by the Bongo Ball organisers, just a tad unfortunate about the mid-rave power outage.