Sound Of Scotland
Meet DJ Rebecca Vasmant, who found a new audience for eclectic music in Glasgow
DJ Rebecca Vasmant found a new audience for eclectic music
DESCRIBING Rebecca Vasmant as a debut artist feels odd – the DJ, record collector and curator has hosted club nights, record fairs and radio shows, and even toured the world with Ministry of Sound, becoming a well-kent name in Scottish club culture.
With a reputation for blending house and techno with contemporary jazz, her sets – from the Sub Club to the Glasgow Jazz Festival – are the stuff of legend.
The first release on her new label, Rebecca’s Records, With Love, From Glasgow is a celebration of Scottish jazz and a snapshot of a vibrant contemporary music scene that has long flown under the radar of those not in the know.
Recorded by Rebecca in her home studio in Glasgow and featuring a cast of 23 musicians, it’s a love letter to a world emerging from lockdown from a city with a musical heritage that is far richer and more diverse than many give it credit for.
As with many artists, the pandemic had a role to play in bringing Rebecca’s musical vision to the world, as the enforced break in her hectic schedule of travel and gigs gave her the time she needed to finish the album and figure out how best to release it.
“It took a long time to get to where I felt I had enough music for an album,” she says, “and to start sending it to labels.
“But I got such negative responses, and I think it was hard for people to understand what it actually was.
“I feel all of that happened for a reason, because two and a half years later I started my own label. And if I had released it back then, it would have looked and sounded different.
“It’s a love letter from Glasgow to the world – to say ‘hello’, this is our city and we have all this talent, love and friendship and a really supportive scene.”
The earliest tracks on the album – credited to Rebecca
Vasmant & Glasgow Jazz Experiment – date back to 2012, when Rebecca teamed up with saxophonist Harry Weir and trumpet player Cameron Thomson Duncan for a Dj-live hybrid set at the Glasgow Jazz Festival.
The trio kept in touch – giving Rebecca her first connection to a scene in which she would later find collaborators “and lifelong friends”.
For Rebecca, jazz is a passion that stems from her childhood, long before she became a DJ.
As her reputation grew, she began experimenting with working jazz tracks into live sets and mixtapes, one of which, when released online, got such an enthusiastic response she realised there was an audience for a more eclectic selection of music – even if it took some time before the Glasgow crowds began to embrace it.
“I was in a battle with myself for years over whether to move to London,” she says. “It felt like, instead of being a DJ, you could be a selector – go to parties and events and bars and just play the music that you love. It wasn’t necessarily about the mixing, or being as good as the boys, or being in the Sub Club with people staring at you over the booth wondering what you were doing.
“Being accepted as a jazz DJ in Glasgow has happened over a long time, because it’s a very house and techno city. But we have a lot of jazz that’s influenced by hip hop and neo-soul and funk and Afrobeat that is now starting to form, through the bands that have come up through the Glasgow Conservatoire jazz course and people like me who are coming in and producing stuff. It’s a very exciting time.”
With Love, From Glasgow is available now from Rebecca’s Records as a vinyl and digital release.
“We have this talent, love and friendship”