Goombay Dance Band

Goombay Dance Band
Goombay Dance Band on the cover of their 1981 single "Seven Tears"
Background information
Origin	Hamburg, Germany
Genres	Euro disco, Europop Santiago pop
Years active	1979–present
Labels	CBS
Website	www.goombay-dance-band.com
Members	Oliver Bendt Alicia Bendt Dorothy Hellings Wendy Doorsen Mario Slijngaard
Past members	Beverlee Wallace Wendy Walker

Goombay Dance Band is a German band created in 1979 by Oliver Bendt, named after a small bay on the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. Their music has a distinctive sound (somewhat similar to Boney M.), which is a mixture of soca, calypso and western pop. The group enjoyed greatest commercial success at the beginning of the 1980s, spawning such number 1 hits as "Sun of Jamaica", "Seven Tears" and "Aloha-Oe, Until We Meet Again". Goombay Dance Band built up a fan base across Europe and proved very popular in South Africa too, where "Sun of Jamaica" and "Aloha-Oe" entered the charts.

The band released the song "Sun of Jamaica" at the end of 1979. It topped the German single charts for nine weeks in 1980 and has sold in 11 million copies. Their next single was "Aloha-Oe, Until We Meet Again", based on a Liliuokalani's composition "Aloha ʻOe". The song charted within the top 5 in European charts, including the number 1 spot in Austria. The group's debut album Zauber der Karibik, internationally known as Sun of Jamaica, was met with commercial success, reaching the top 5 in several countries. The second album, Land of Gold, performed much worse, only charting outside the German top 40, but spawned hits "Eldorado" and "Rain".

In 1981, the band released the album Holiday in Paradise, which featured the song "Seven Tears". When released in the UK next year, "Seven Tears" became the band's breakthrough hit on the British market, where it topped the singles chart for three weeks and was also a million-seller. This success was followed by the release of the compilation Seven Tears, which was well received in the UK, while in mainland Europe, the band released the retrospective Tropical Dreams to a modest success.