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IzangoMa: Ngo Ma
by Chris May
The first thing that needs to be said is: this is not a jazz album. Jazz is only one of many musical traditions, most of them South African, that coalesce to form IzangoMa's debut. The percussion-rich, horn-embellished, multi-layered blend weaves together kwaito, mbaqanga, township jazz, marabi, pantsula, mbube, Jamaican nyabhingi drumming, electronica and a whole lot more. But jazz is an honoured tradition in the mix. The penultimate track, “Tribute To Johnny Dyani" (check the YouTube below), is a salute ...
read moreBokani Dyer: Radio Sechaba
by Dan Bilawsky
Bokani Dyer has already established himself as one of the leading musical voices of his generation in South Africa. But with Radio Sechaba--the heralded multi-hyphenate's first release on aural arbiter Gilles Peterson's Brownswood imprint--he expands his voice, reach and notability. Synthesizing a set of broad influences and building sounds of possibility surrounding his homeland and a global community, Dyer delivers an irresistible amalgam for our times and future. Born in exile in Botswana in 1986 and returning ...
read moreKokoroko: Could We Be More
by Chris May
One of the features of the 2022 alternative London jazz scene is the incorporation of musical styles originating in Africa and the Caribbean, from whence a high proportion of prominent musicians on that scene trace their heritage. Not every band shares this African and/or Caribbean dimension but the majority do and it is one of the factors behind the broadening of the audience base for jazz in Britain that has developed since around 2016. For the musicians, ...
read moreVarious Artists: Indaba Is
by Chris May
There are probably several reasons why American jazz made the deep and lasting impact it did on South Africa in the 1950s. One may be that the colonial regime which was imposed on the country during Europe's pan-African nineteenth-century landgrab was among the most vicious of them all, and persisted the longest through the apartheid system which was in existence until the early 1990s. American jazz was born as protest and cultural-survival music in similar circumstances, and that vibe must ...
read moreZara McFarlane: Songs Of An Unknown Tongue
by Chris May
It takes courage for a musician to depart from a successful recipe to the extent that the British singer and songwriter Zara McFarlane does on Songs of An Unknown Tongue. The disc is not a complete shift from the paradigm of her three previous albums, but it is a radical spin on it. First, what has changed. McFarlane's last album, Arise (Brownswood, 2017) was, like its predecessors, an acoustic set played by a band drawn from McFarlane's ...
read moreJoe Armon-Jones: Turn To Clear View
by Chris May
A cornerstone of London's underground jazz scene—as well as leading his own band he plays in Ezra Collective and groups led by the tenor saxophonists Binker Golding and Nubya Garcia—the keyboard player Joe Armon-Jones released his first own-name album, Starting Today (Brownswood), in spring 2018. A jewel of nu-fusion which owes almost as much to the Los Angeles R&B and funk scene as it does to British woke jazz, the album features Armon-Jones leading a lineup of fellow London luminaries ...
read moreVarious Artists: Sunny Side Up
by Chris May
London DJ Gilles Peterson's worldwide touring produces some singular jazz and near-jazz experiences, the best of which he documents on his Brownswood Recordings label. Modern Cuban music figures prominently in the catalogue, and there have been several Japanese jazz albums, most memorably the Toshio Matsuura Group's Loveplaydance: 8 Scenes From The Floor (Brownswood, 2018). The label has released another left-field contender with Sunny Side Up, which showcases near-jazz bands from Melbourne, Australia, where there is, we learn, a thriving underground ...
read moreKokoroko: Kokoroko
by Chris May
If you ask an Afrobeat fan to name their favourite bands--excluding lineups led by Fela Kuti during his lifetime--the probability is that their top five choices will include Seun Kuti's Egypt 80 and Femi Kuti's Positive Force, both based in Lagos, along with Dele Sosimi's Afrobeat Orchestra, based in London. Other credible outfits have emerged, but none which has so far seriously challenged that tripartite ascendancy. London trumpeter Sheila Maurice-Grey's Kokoroko is an outfit to watch, however, combining, as it ...
read moreZara McFarlane: East Of The River Nile
by Chris May
As a teaser for her upcoming album, the divine Zara McFarlane has released a 4-track EP revisiting Jamaican dub and rockers wizard Augustus Pablo's canonical 1977 single “East Of The River Nile." McFarlane's disc, on which her wordless vocals stay close to Pablo's original melodica topline, showcases her signature blend of jazz and Caribbean music to transporting and trippy effect (pass the chalice, folks). The track is produced by McFarlane's longtime drummer and collaborator Moses Boyd and arranged by trombonist ...
read moreMaisha: There Is A Place
by Chris May
The London jazz scene, which is in 2018 more active and characterful than it has been since the jazz-dance movement of the 1980s, offers up another jewel with this debut physical-release by spiritual-jazz septet Maisha. The band, led by drummer Jake Long, surfaced in 2016 with the download-only live album Welcome To A New Welcome (Jazz Re:freshed) before gaining a bigger profile as the group chosen to open the epoch-defining various-artists compilation, We Out Here (Brownswood, 2018). That album was ...
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