Today sees the launch of Reawakening. Our sixth immersive multimedia feature, it investigates the new raw edge to jazz in the UK, in which young musicians are relishing a new era of open-minded audiences and crossovers into hip hip, grime and electronica.
Moses Boyd of Binker and Moses
Taking you deep into the personalities, music, clubs, and motivations, Reawakening gives you a unique perspective including a stage view of MOBO award winners Binker and Moses playing a gig, as well as music from Theon Cross and United Vibrations.
On this journey we find that this is not just about the music but about social change. United Vibrations not only use the music to promote a message of harmonious living but, in R.U.S.S. (Rural Urban Synthesis Society), they run an organisation which is looking to develop affordable, sustainable living.
United Vibrations
Saxophonist Soweto Kinch has been running the Flyover Show, a jazz, hip hop, funk and soul festival which takes place underneath an Birmingham underpass to bring so-called high art into the streets, inspiring urban youth through music. It has proved so successful that he plans to take the idea into other countries.
In these ways, jazz in the UK today is finding relevance and meaning. With the inclusion of jazz in one of the biggest rap albums to date, Kendrick Lamar's 'To Pimp A Butterfly' and the meteoric rise of LA's Kamasi Washington, could this be the moment when jazz begins its ascension to what many would say is its rightful position at the top of the musical foodchain?
It is power, it is freedom, and it is coming. Witness the Reawakening here.