🎶 TFK at Culture Night Belfast 2025 🎶
Culture Night is back in Belfast on the 19th of September, and we’re thrilled to announce that The Funky Kongs will be performing!
Join us for an unforgettable evening of video game jazz and funk in Belfast, featuring our high-energy Mario Kart Live Band Show alongside a mix of jazz/funk arrangements of iconic video game music.
The best part? Like many Culture Night events, our show is completely FREE. Whether you want to drop in for a quick listen or stick around for the full performance, you’ll get to experience gaming soundtracks reimagined in a way you’ve never heard before.
🎷🎸🥁 Expect big energy, funky grooves, and plenty of nostalgia as we bring video game music live to Belfast for one night only!
👉 Save the date: 19th September – Culture Night Belfast – The Funky Kongs.
Doors at 6 PM, Performance, 7 PM - 10PM
Culture Night: The Funky Kongs: Video Games Live! in the Waterfront Studio on 19 September 2025!
What happens when five player-one nerds with a love for jazz hit start together? You unlock The Funky Kongs - a band unlike any other that's bringing video game music to life- live!
This squad of musicians and gamers take the soundtracks you grew up with -Mario Kart, Final Fantasy, Animal Crossing, Undertale - and crank them up to 16-bit levels of groove.
Expect jazz, funk, bossa nova and swing, fused into a power-up of nostalgia, audience interaction, and pure fun. Armed with sax, bass, guitar, keys and drums, this home-grown crew doesn’t just cover the classics—they respawn them.
Every arrangement is built in-house, crafted with passion, precision and enough energy to fill an arcade. All you have to do is press power on and join us at the Waterfront for a next-level show. The cake is definitely not a lie.
So grab your extra life, summon your party, and- in the immortal words of a certain karting plumber - let’s-a go!
We have a video game jazz set…
the funky kongs now have a video game jazz set!
We’ve been busy behind the scenes in Crossgar working on something we’re really excited about — a brand-new video game jazz set, and it’s now officially available to book across Northern Ireland!
Why are we doing this? Simple: we want to play more music and share even more of those incredible gaming soundtracks with live audiences here. Our Mario Kart Live Band Show has been an electrifying hit, and it’s not going anywhere — but we also wanted to create a stand-alone show that can fit into all kinds of venues across Northern Ireland’s live music scene.
That’s where the video game jazz set comes in. Expect funk, jazz, and fusion takes on iconic video game themes, performed by our 5-piece band. For smaller venues, we can also scale down to a 3-piece lineup, bringing the same high-energy sound to intimate gigs, bars, and events.
From Belfast city centre to festivals and venues all over Northern Ireland, The Funky Kongs are ready to bring live video game music to your stage.
👉 Bookings are now open — get in touch to bring video game jazz to your event!
A look at our setlist! (not final)
Angry Birds Theme
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Theme
Balatro Main Theme
Baldurs Gate Main Theme
Bob-Omb Battlefield
Breath of the wild Theme
Casion Calavera
Coconut Mall
Cruel World
Eterna Forest
Final Fantasy VII Theme
Gotta Catch 'Em All
Green Hill Zone
Here Comes The Hero
Hollow Bastion
Live & Learn
MEGALOVANIA
Mega Man 2 Intro
Mii Channel Theme
Now Entering
Stardew Valley Overture
Still Alive
Super Mario 64 Theme
Super Smash Bros Brawl Theme
Sweden
Travelers
Traverse Town
Undertale
Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There
Wii Sports
NI GAME DEV NETWORK // SUMMER SOCIAL
Thank you NI Game Dev Network!
Huge thanks to the team at the NI Game Dev Network for having us at their 2025 Summer Social in Cutters Wharf, Belfast!
This marks our first offical LIVE show as a band. We had an amazing time and loved meeting you all 🙌 We’re already looking forward to the next Mario Kart showdown!
We couldn’t ask for a better way to start gigging - working with the local game dev network in Northern Ireland to play some Mario Kart tunes. We also brought along small prizes for the winners of each race.
Everytime we put on this show we’re learning more and more about our sound and tech and what we need to improve on and what we can push. You may have noticed us using in-ears, not only does this help us hear ourselves but we also get to cue parts of the sheet music and call out the Starman Theme! We did it sparingly this time as there was a lot happening.
👉 Bookings are now open — get in touch to bring Mario Kart with a live band to your event!
mario kart with a live band at cutters wharf for the ni game dev network summer social
FORMATION LAP
The Funky Kongs Test Show at Maddens Bar Belfast
Massive thanks to all our friends who came down to support our test drive!
We’re quite a tech heavy show so this was an opportunity to show what we’ve been working on and put our equipment through it’s paces 🙌 here’s a wee snippet of Mario Kart Stadium from last night also!
Shout out to Maddens Bar in Belfast for helping us get this show off the ground.
We hope to see you all again real soon! 🚗🏁🎉🏆
MARIO KART MUSIC IS AMAZING
The Music of Mario Kart is Amazing!
Honestly, we can’t fault any of the music. As a soundtrack there’s a lot of variety and learning about the music has been an interesting history lesson for those ludomusicologists out there. It’s introduced us to T-Square in the late 80’s (Check out their tune Truth). I’ve included some videos I’ve come across that go into more detail about Mario Kart 8.
Early Practice
Taking our positions at the start line!
With the help of other players in the group we set out by figuring out what we wanted to perform. You’ve probaly seen the Mario Kart Live Band trend going on. So we though, what the heck. And started transcribing music for our band. As a 5-piece we needed to take the music from Mario Kart 8 and condense it down to our setup. We listened to all the tracks, used resources available to us to fit the music in. Eventually we had enough to get rehearsals underway.
The thing we’ve noticed about Mario Kart is, although the music is challenging, and we can’t underestimate that, a lot of it is jazz, funk, fusion with variations in between. But the silver lining is, it’s video game music, which lends itself to being repetitive.
And after a few months, the layouts of the pieces started to stick. Here’s an early band recording we’ve made, bare, in mind this is early and we’re still exploring the music. Do not expect and epic piece. But as I see a use in documenting our progress here we our showing our working out.
Hey! It’s the funky kongs
We’ve all probaly seen the trend of live video game music groups, orchestras, jazz/funk bands. And in Belfast we’ve seen a couple of groups pop-up but we haven’t seen a dedicated band happen, yet. With The Funky Kongs, we’re hoping to tackle a lot of challenging video game music, and present it to an audience at a high standard of playing. Mainly becuase we want to push ourselves with music we love listening too!
