Listen to 5 Contemporary Jazz Artists
With no Cork Jazz Festival this year, low trees highlights five bands that we’d love to see play in 2021
There’ll be no ivories tinkling or trumpets parp-parping this year as Cork’s annual jazz festival takes an unwanted break. Although the weekend is always filled with fun and excitement, the festival has mostly diluted the jazz element in recent years. Accusations of “the lack of contemporary jazz” and “gone back to old habits, with some not-really-jazz headliners” from national newspapers highlighting the annual gathering’s lack of credibility when it comes to supporting actual jazz. Are Aslan not jazz you gasp?
Gig-goers would bite your/their hand off for any sort of live show right but with a bit of luck we’ll have the festival back in 2021. And with a bit of luck, maybe we’ll be enjoying a pint of Beamish at the Guinness Jazz Festival whilst listening to at least one of these extraordinary contemporary bands.
Maisha
Drummer Jake Long’s super “spiritual-afro-jazz” collective featuring the extraordinary Nubya Garcia on sax. Since the release of There is a Place at the tail-end of 2018, Maisha‘s first record has been hanging around my record player ever since and most likely would have perched elegantly on the peak of a Best of 2018 list if the site posted one that year. A collective that epitomises the crackling energy and community that glows at the heart of the current London jazz scene.
maisha.bandcamp.com
Nubya Garcia
Speaking of Nubya Garcia, the London virtuoso has been a leading light of the London scene for years, yet début album SOURCE only just dropped in August. Like an immovable colossus standing strong at the centre of a hurricane, Garcia is a powerhouse. Also check out Nérija, another gifted Garcia group.
nubyagarcia.bandcamp.com
Kamasi Washington
Taking jazz from the streets of Los Angeles to festival stages across the globe, Kamasi Washington has been hailed as revitalising jazz as a contemporary conversation. Organically connected to the masses through collaborations with Kendrick Lamar, Washington’s challenging three hour opus The Epic is quite simply: extraordinary.
kamasiwashington.bandcamp.com
Sons of Kemet
Similar to Nubya Garcia, Shabaka Hutchings projects and collectives could fill a top five list all by themselves. From the trippy psych adventure that is Comet Is Coming to the existential overhaul that is Shabaka And The Ancestors, Hutchings is landing musical punches across the spectrum. But it is his Mercury Music Prize nominated Sons Of Kemet that gets the nod above all else here. A quartet composed of two drummers, a tuba and sax, Sons of Kemet burn any boundaries imposed on them, a raging inferno of historical anger and technical excellence.
sonsofkemet.bandcamp.com
Makaya McCraven
As much influenced by Madlib and Flying Lotus as his jazz drummer father, Chicago-based “beat scientist” Makaya McCraven is another starlet refusing to be labelled away in a box. 2018’s Universal Beings saw McCraven travelling the globe to record live sessions with musicians in various cities that includes many of the folks listed above.
intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/universal-beings
