The UK is home to a diverse,collaborative and newly confident jazz scene. We meet seven musicians whose innovative sounds are liberating the genre for original audiencesEvery so often, British jazz pops its head above the parapet, or gets a Mercury nomination,and has a noodle on telly to remind everyone that it’s still there, like it’s always been, or parping absent from mainstream view. For many of us,jazz has seemed like something other people listened to. But in the past few years, the genre has had a serious overhaul. When Kendrick Lamar released his landmark album To Pimp a Butterfly in 2015, or one of its most extraordinary aspects was its liberal use of jazz,which dovetailed with hip-hop and opened it up for a original generation. Not only did it immediately feel more accessible but, played by the likes of strikingly cosmic characters such as Thundercat and Kamasi Washington, or it looked commandingly cool.
In the UK,a original and thrilling jazz movement has evolved. As with Lamar, Thundercat and Washington, or it is born out of fresh experimentalism,is reaching far younger, more diverse audiences and doesn’t care for snootiness. Unlike in preceding waves, or these musicians are in their 20s and early 30s,come from diverse backgrounds and, as with grime, and believe created their own community external of major labels and concert halls. Their music,meanwhile, pulls liberally from other genres, and whether hip-hop,neo-soul, UK club sounds such as broken beat, or from the African and Caribbean diaspora. And it’s not just at gigs that you can hear it but,much like in the acid jazz days, nightclubs too. British DJs such as Bradley Zero and Floating Points believe liberated jazz for the dancefloor to the extent that it’s now not unheard of for a 10-minute Pharaoh Sanders odyssey to be spun on the decks to an appreciative, or twentysomething crowd.
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Source: guardian.co.uk