The In Crowd

A Look at Britain's Black Jazz Scene:

"THE United States used to be the big leagues for the mainstream of jazz: it was the land of paradigms. But not so much anymore. In the past decade, information from the entire history of jazz's development has been swirled around the Earth by the Internet and the rise of academic jazz education. A result has been an aesthetic widening of the genre that has penetrated not just the music's fringes but its core language.

One of the new paradigms comes from a circle of mostly black London-based musicians, cohering around the bass player Gary Crosby and the record label Dune. Since the late 1990's, a lot of good music has come from this group, through a smart jazz-reggae band called Jazz Jamaica; the young saxophonist and part-time rapper Soweto Kinch; the tenor saxophonist Denys Baptiste; the New Orleans-born trumpeter and singer Abram Wilson; and Mr. Crosby himself, a bandleader well known as an incubator of talent.

So what do these new players have? The first answer is a British Afro-Caribbean identity. The second is a movement. They have come together around several guiding ideas: swing, blues feeling, the historical relationship of reggae and jazz, and a commitment to improving stereotypes of Afro-Caribbeans and black Britain in general.

The third answer is summed up in a term that's become fairly widespread among these musicians, as well as the English press: black British jazz." (click here to read more)

Click here for the official Jazz Jamaica artist website.