Woodbridge Festival Celebrates Suffolk's Role in British Soul

11 August 2025 - Press release

Woodbridge Festival of Art and Music 2025 is to celebrate the role played by Suffolk's US Airforce basses in introducing black American music to the UK. This year's festival will be headlined by legendary 1960s soul singer, Geno Washington, and pioneering 1970s funk DJ, Les Spaine, on the weekend of 29-31 August, as part of new collaborative art project, Super Fly.

One of two themes being announced for this year’s festival, Super Fly explores the hidden history that US airforce bases in Suffolk played in the development of UK music from the 1950s to the 1990s. Between this period members of USAF personnel accounted for one in seven people living in Suffolk.

Geno Washington, the early Brit Soul star celebrated in Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ hit Geno, is playing Woodbridge for the first time since he was based at USAF Woodbridge and Bentwaters in the early 1960s.
Geno, who was serving in the US Air force as a gym instructor,  only started singing after he saw Alvin Stardust, then known as Shane Fenton, performing in Suffolk. After being demobbed Geno decided to stay in the UK and was soon touring nationally as Geno Washington and The Ram Jam band, becoming a popular Northern Soul star, he appeared alongside rising stars such as Jimi Hendrix, Cream and Pink Floyd. His appearance this August sees him bring his up-beat brand of Brit soul home to Woodbridge for the first time in 60 years.

Pioneering 1970s UK funk DJ Les Spaine makes an appearance 50 years after he first played Suffolk’s US airforce bases. At the time Les was resident DJ at Liverpool's 2000 capacity all night funk club Timepiece. Here he attracted a following amongst USAF service personnel, who would travel all over the UK to find music to dance to. Soon Les was being bused from Liverpool to Suffolk to play club nights on the airforce bases - where he also discovered records unavailable in the rest of the UK. Les went on to become the first British representative for Motown records; working with everyone from Stevie Wonder to Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and The Jacksons.

Spin, the other theme for 2025, launched in mid June with a series of interactive workshops and audio visual events being held in schools, colleges and community events across Suffolk. The project explores the continuous role wind and water mills have played through agricultural history, the industrial revolution and clean energy of the future. It has been generously supported by local councillors in East Suffolk District Council, Scops Arts Trust and The COOP.

Both projects feature in Woodbridge Festival's popular festival week and event in Elmhurst Park, featuring live music, DJs, eco and art workshops, street food vilage, craft beers and natural wines, the return of the Anchors Aweigh art trail and more. All at accessibe prices, with free entry for under 16s.

Founded in 2012, Woodbridge Festival is a not for profit organisation with charitable aims, including an Ofsted recognised year round educational arts and music programme working with schools and colleges across Suffolk.

Woodbridge Festival founder and DJ Ben Osborne, who started work on Super Fly in 2018, says the project highlights an important and over-looked cultural history: "Everyone knows the role shipping ports played in bringing American black music into Liverpool, London and other major cities. The accepted history is this paved the way for the Beatles, Rolling stones, Cream and Led Zeppelin - bands that changed music culture across the world. But Super Fly celebrates a different, hidden, rural history - where USAF bases brought American black music into the UK through rural Suffolk."
Super Fly is a collaborative, cross platform art and cultural history project, created by Ben Osborne and Noise of Art.