The
UK jazz renaissance shows no sign of letting up and – from Nubya Garcia to Xhosa Cole – it’s a fresh wave of Black talent that’s pushing things forward
With a concert at the Proms, a Mercury prize nomination and widespread acclaim for her debut album, Source, Nubya Garcia has had a very good year. More importantly, the saxophonist is one of several young Black
British jazz musicians bringing new listeners to the genre and serving as a role model for future players. Garcia’s fellow saxophonists, Camilla George and Cassie Kinoshi, vocalists Zara McFarlane and Cherise, and the five-piece ensemble Ezra Collective are just a handful of the other artists who have made an impact beyond the UK in the past five years or so, appearing at major festivals and on radio and television. They are in demand.
Such visibility is entirely welcome when one considers that jazz, a century into its existence, can still be confusing, if not forbidding, for those listeners spooked by songs with shifting time signatures and extended solos. These artists have not abandoned the genre’s core principles of rhythmic ingenuity and complex harmony, but they often share a strong dance sensibility that reflects their lived reality as Insta-generation improvisers of African and Caribbean heritage. That means exposure to Afrobeat, dub and soundsystems, in addition to a whole internet’s worth of past
American jazz greats such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders.