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That brown girl's back in the swing

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Even though Boney M were once one of the biggest bands on the planet, most people would be hard-pressed to name any of the four original members.

Which is perhaps just as well. When the band appear in Hong Kong next week, only one of the originals will be on stage. Liz Mitchell is the only one to make it from the 1970s heyday, and so will be the only authentic voice when the band play at the Convention and Exhibition Centre.

However, the way Mitchell tells it, it was ever thus.

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In the 1970s, Boney M - Jamaican-born, British-raised Mitchell, along with Jamaican Marcia Barrett, Maizie Williams from Montserrat and Bobby Farrell from the Dutch-speaking island of Aruba in the Caribbean - sold some 80 million records of their infectious Eurodisco.

The group enjoyed worldwide fame rivalled only by Abba, with such hits as Daddy Cool, Rasputin, Brown Girl in the Ring and Rivers of Babylon. They're the only band to have appeared twice in Britain's top 10 singles of all time.

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You'd expect such success would have set them up for life - which makes the idea of Mitchell soldiering on seem a tad confusing.

But first, back to the Boney M sound. According to an interview Mitchell gave in the British press a few years ago, hers was actually the only voice you really ever heard - which makes this current incarnation of the band possibly the most honest yet.

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