The China Mail - Ezra Collective's infectious energy defies jazz 'elitism' to win new fans

Over the last two years alone, "EZ" has become the first British jazz group to win the prestigious Mercury Prize and have a Top 10 UK album with 2024's "Dance, No One's Watching."

Its crowning glory came in March when it was named group of the year at the 2025 Brit Awards, an annual celebration of UK music.

"Jazz, when I was growing up, was an expensive thing to tap into. I couldn't afford to get into most jazz clubs, I definitely couldn't afford a drink," drummer Femi Koleoso told AFP at his small music studio in North London, close to where he grew up.

"Jazz felt like an upper class, elitist high art form... so we're just making people feel like this is for everyone," he added.

The story of Ezra Collective, named after the biblical prophet, began around a decade ago when Koleoso and his younger brother TJ, a bassist, began playing in teenage jazz clubs, where they met keyboardist Joe Armon-Jones and saxophonist James Mollison.

They were later joined by trumpeter Ife Ogunjobi.

- 'Temple of joy' -

"We learned jazz... but we fell in love with Afrobeat first. That was our first love, and infusing the two was the first sound," explained Koleoso.

A decade later, the band, which will play at the Glastonbury Festival later this month, has incorporated other influences such as hip-hop, dub, reggae, Ghanaian highlife music and "most recently salsa music", he said.

But jazz still "underpins" everything the band creates, added the drummer.

Its danceable and inventive concoction has won fans far beyond jazz's traditional base, helped by the wild energy of its concerts where the charismatic Koleoso, like a preacher, exhorts the crowd to create a "temple of joy".

One of the leading groups in an insurgent jazz scene, driven by a new generation of musicians, the quintet surprised everyone by winning the prestigious Mercury Prize for their second album, "Where I'm Meant To Be", released in 2023.

The victory "finally acknowledges a golden age for UK jazz", said Guardian music critic Alexis Petridis.

"A lot of us have a similar origin story in that a lot of us met in these youth clubs," which, according to bassist TJ Koleoso, have helped make London "the best place to be born in the world" for aspiring young musicians.

- 'Free-for-all' -

The thriving community owes much to the "Tomorrow's Warriors" programme established by Gary Crosby and Janine Irons.

Attempting to address the lack of diversity in jazz, they founded the programme in 1991 to provide young people with free spaces to practise, learn to play together and meet artists.

It has fostered numerous talents such as Nubya Garcia, Kokoroko, and Ezra Collective, and the band's members now give lessons or donate instruments to the city's clubs, which have seen their numbers dwindle amid spending cuts.

"This moment right here is because of the great youth clubs, and the great teachers and the great schools that support young people playing music," Femi Koleoso said at the Brits in March, as his band triumphed against music giants such as Coldplay and The Cure.

Devout Christians and fans of Fela Kuti and Arsenal Football Club, the brothers grew up in the north London neighbourhood of Enfield.

"I grew up next to a Bangladeshi family, my best friend in school was Turkish, I'm Nigerian, my best mate is Ghanaian and (there's) Jamaicans everywhere you go," said Femi Koleoso.

"That kind of melting-pot" has inspired "everything I wrote and created", added Femi Koleoso, who also toured with top group Gorillaz in recent years.

When Ezra Collective takes to the stage, "the first part of the song will be played accurately" but "the moment the last note of the first part of the song is done, it's just a free-for-all, just see what happens, and long may that continue," said a smiling Femi Koleoso.

"I don't know if AI could be doing that gig," added TJ Koleoso, addressing the debate about technology. He insisted that "real, authentic things survive" such upheavals.

D.Pan--ThChM