The opening notes of a new wave: Sanjoy Narayan writes on British jazz

It wasn’t until the early 20th century that more frequent trans-Atlantic travel brought music records to Britain from America, widening the choice of genres available to listeners. By the 1930s, inspired by American jazz, British musicians began taking to the genre too. Then came the Windrush generation of Caribbean immigrants, named for the Empire Windrush, one of the ships roped in to bring immigrants to England, to fill gaps in the labour market in the post-war years. These immigrants brought their indigenous musical traditions with them, and by the late 1940s, a new kind of black British music was making an impact.

By the 1960s and ’70s, British jazz began to develop a unique sound, bearing notes of calypso, reggae and West African folk music. Since then, British jazz has become even more sonically adventurous. And, over the past 10 years, mainly centred around London, there has been an electrifying new wave of jazz.

Ezra Collective are a prominent vanguard of this movement. Like alchemists of sound, the quintet — made up of drummer Femi Koleoso, his brother TJ Koleoso on bass, Ife Ogunjobi on trumpet, Joe Armon-Jones on keyboards and James Mollison on saxophone — blends traditional jazz with vibrant contemporary sounds, including hip hop, soul, funk, and Nigerian Afrobeat. Last year, their second full-length album, Where I’m Meant to Be, won the prestigious British Mercury Prize.

It was the first jazz album to win (since its inception in 1992, the Mercury Prize has been won primarily by pop and rock albums). And that’s because the quintet’s brand of jazz (click here for a brief playlist) is accessible to audiences beyond the genre’s traditional fan base.

The hybrid music that Koleoso, 29, whose parents are Nigerian immigrants, and his bandmates create appeals to young fans of contemporary music too. Their music is joyous and celebratory. It frequently features collaborations with vocalists, rappers, poets and other musicians. On Where I’m Meant to Be, the Zambian singer and poet Sampa the Great sings on the opening track, Life Goes On; other tracks feature the British progressive rapper Kojey Radical, and the R&B singer-songwriter Jorja Smith.

Success has come quickly to Ezra Collective, which was formed when the band members, still in their teens, met at a London youth centre in 2016. They have quickly found recognition among the world’s jazz cognoscenti, landed gigs around the world, and got massive radio play. Last December, the band even performed at NH7 Weekender in Pune, in a line-up that included India’s Daler Mehndi, the British rapper MIA and Swiss singer-songwriter Priya Ragu.

Ezra Collective is named, incidentally, after a 4th-century-BCE Jewish scribe and priest who is said to have studied the people before him to frame his own path forward, a philosophy that the quintet says it believes in.

Koleoso has said that while he and his bandmates draw inspiration from bebop pioneers such as Charlie Parker, and from the genre’s greatest innovators, such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane, they also draw on their own musical heritage (including the music of Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti); from British underground electronic dance music genres such as grime and jungle; from dub, which is a subgenre of reggae; and from modern British hip hop.

“Miles Davis was listening to soundtracks and classical music and mixing those with bebop jazz. Dizzy Gillespie was listening to Afro-Cuban music and mixing it with his big band tradition,” Koleoso told The Evening Standard, after winning the Mercury Prize. That kind of sums up Ezra Collective’s approach: they listen to jazz greats and mix it up with other modern genres… and it works!

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