The UK jazz explosion

AFUNNY thing happened at this summer’s Field Day festival in London. In the mid-afternoon heat, a tent full of hipsterish young people started raving, pogoing and generally losing their shit, not to the latest punk band, techno DJ or grime MC, but to a jazz band: the remarkable Sons Of Kemet. In fact, the whole first day of the festival – which styles itself as a barometer of musical cool – was distinguished by the number of young British jazz musicians on the lineup, from drummer Moses Boyd to saxophonist Nubya Garcia, most of whom also appeared on February’s scene-defining compilation We Out Here.

The idea of a jazz resurgence has been gathering pace for a few years now, with LA’s Kamasi Washington hailed as the key figure. He was received like a deity at London shows this year, but he was keen to share the Roundhouse stage with saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, bandleader of Sons Of Kemet and The Comet Is Coming. Washington also made time to drop into Deptford improv jam Steam Down, suggesting that the most exciting musical connections are now taking place on this side of the pond.

There has been plenty of decent British jazz made over the last couple of decades, but this new wave feels different: more vital, less abstract, imbued with a real sense of time and place. Sons Of Kemet’s Your Queen

Is A Reptile – far more than just a token jazz nomination for this year’s Mercury Prize – was an invigorating black history lesson; Moses Boyd’s

Displaced Diaspora explored his Afro-Caribbean heritage while namechecking Peckham’s Rye Lane and the N171 bus. There has also been a lot less anxiety about revisiting techniques of the past and fusing them with other genres: Sarathy Korwar tackled the spiritual-jazz canon with a group of Indian classical musicians; 2018 albums by Kamaal Williams, Mansur Brown and Tenderlonious approached jazz-funk and fusion with a hip-hop and grime mindset.

Despite the closure of a key London venue – Stoke Newington’s Total Refreshment Centre, where Moses Boyd and Binker Golding recorded this year’s electrifying Alive In The East – the scene appears to be going from strength to strength, with the fine new LP from Nubya Garcia’s band Maisha (reviewed p22) marking another step forward. While most of the musicians mentioned here are London-based, there’s lots of evidence that the trend for musical openness and exploration is far more widespread, across all regions and genres. The future looks bright. SAM RICHARDS