9JAZZ
theaustralian.com.au/review June 2-3, 2018V1 - AUSE01Z50AR
Garcia, 26, sitting in her local cafe in NewCross, southeast London, a vibrant creativehub that includes Peckham and Deptford andhappening DIY club/jam nights with namessuch as Steez and Steam Down, at whichacclaimed Californian saxophonist and bandleader Kamasi Washington was spotted duringhis recent visit to the capital.
“The press are calling it new but we’ve beendoing this for a while,” she continues, her head-phones around her neck, her laptop on thetable in front of her. “A lot of us grew up play-ing music together. But I’m thankful thatpeople are interested, and also that people whodon’t normally come to jazz are seeing musi-cians smashing it out and doing incrediblethings. It’s great for us, for the generationabove us, and for those who are coming up.”
By the time that up-and-coming generationarrives, it’s hoped female band leaders andinstrumentalists no longer will be mistaken forsingers. This assumption is made of Garcia andher female peers — among them trumpet play-er Yazz Ahmed, saxophonist Camilla Georgeand pianist Sarah Tandy — with monotonousregularity. A graduate of the Trinity LabanConservatoire of Music and Dance, Garcia hasplans for a project that “will get people to lookat themselves and check their patriarchalbullshit”, but she isn’t elaborating just yet.
“I wanted to stop moaning and take someaction to positively change the future,” saysthis poised, likeable talent, a hipster vision withlong plaits and edgy gold jewellery, her knuck-les inked with minimalist shapes. “A friend ofmine asked me which female sax player Ilooked up to when I was a kid, and I didn’t haveanyone! That’s crazy! Gender-wise, ethnicity-wise, there’s still so much to do.”
There’s also so much to talk about, from hersolo EP Nubya’s 5ive (pronounced Noob-I-ah,by the way) and its follow-up this year, WhenWe Are, to guest performances on celebratedsolo projects by band mates including pianistJoe Armon-Jones and drummer Moses Boyd;from her work with all-female Afrobeat collec-tive Nerija to playing at clubs as DJ Nyasha(Nyasha is her middle name, and the name ofher forthcoming range of hoodies and T-shirts)to gigs at festivals including South by South-west in Austin, Texas, where post-showdemand for When We Are way outstrippedsupply: “This huge queue of people followedme outside to buy my vinyl,” she has said, “andI thought ‘F. k, I’ve only got 11.”
During the past few weeks, Garcia has beenall over London. Scooping the breakthroughact of the year gong at Jazz FM awards.Performing with Sons of Kemet, the tuba-sax-twin kit drums quartet led by saxophonistShabaka Hutchings, another of the scene’sprodigious multi-taskers, at east Londonstomping ground Total Refreshment Centre.Featuring in the orchestra accompanyingBreakin’ Convention, a hip-hop dance festivalheld at Sadler’s Wells Theatre. At the QueenElizabeth Hall, Garcia was part of a femalequartet exploring the power of the protestsong; her interpretation of Coltrane’s prayer-like Alabama was delivered with grace, souland technical rigour.
There was her debut headline slot at thefamous Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in Soho, anestablishment newly hip due to the pullingpower of London’s young jazz Turks, and onethat assumed near mythical status to the youngNubya Nyasha Garcia.
“I’ve been seeing incredible music atRonnie’s since I was 16, so to be playing myown music there was great,” she says of theclub. Its tourist-oriented, cruise-ship vibe is aworld away from fourth-wall-smashing venuessuch as Steam Down, Total RefreshmentCentre or the pop-up clubs hosted by contemp-orary music movement Jazz Re:freshed, whereactive listening — cheering an improvised solo,dancing like no one is watching, rubbingelbows with the musicians — is the norm.
All this, and Garcia has yet to release analbum (in the works, but not to be jinxed withdiscussion). Her busyness is a choice: nextweek she makes her Australian debut at theMelbourne Jazz Festival before playing datesin Castlemaine and Sydney. It’s her first visit toAustralia: “It’s like an entire day away fromhere,” she says, laughing. “That’s just mad.”
The youngest of four children born to aBritish Trinidadian father, a documentaryfilmmaker, and a mother who arrived inBritain as a teen from Guyana, the most“Caribbean” country in South America, Garciagrew up in Camden, northwest London, in acreative household where extra-curricularactivities were the norm. Her two elder sisterspainted, made clothes and studied classicalmusic; her brother played trumpet in theCamden Youth Jazz Band and was heavily intodrum ’n’ bass. Her mother, a big jazz fan, tookher along to gigs; she remembers sitting in acorner of a second tier at the Barbican, agog atHerbie Hancock.
“I used to listen to him so much,” she says ofthe jazz-funk pioneer. “I had these two HerbieHancock CDs that I’d taken from the com-munal CD pile in the lounge and kept upstairsin my room. I played them over and over.”
She was already learning violin, piano andrecorder when, aged 10, she was given her firstsaxophone. “My mum and I were drivingsomewhere when she said: ‘There’s a presentfor you in the boot.’ It was this shiny alto sax,which blew my mind! I started learning class-ical saxophone, which is often transposed fluteand oboe music, and it was too much hardwork for me. I switched to jazz, and that was it.”
Garcia joined a series of weekend bands,studying under teachers including award-winning jazz pianist Nikki Yeoh, who taughther how to improvise. (“I’d be so nervous;improvising is like public speaking! But nowI’m comfortable being uncomfortable.”)
At 17, attending junior music academy, shesaw a notice for a free workshop run byTomorrow’s Warriors, a jazz music and artistdevelopment organisation founded by bassplayer Gary Crosby (formerly of influentialblack British collective the Jazz Warriors) andcommitted to nurturing new talent, especiallygirls and musicians from the African diaspora.“It was packed!” Garcia flashes a grin. “And itwas more diverse than anything I’d experi-enced up until that age; there were people wholooked like me. Gary said I should come backnext week, and that was really what set me off.”
While there’s a tendency for those herald-ing this “new’’ London jazz scene to imaginethat it sprang, fully formed, out of nowhere, aconfluence of factors — development initia-tives, social-media savvy, cross-genre literacy,affordable spaces and a sense of purposefostered by the political climate — are respon-sible for its evolution. Check out the musicianson We Out Here, the nine-track compilationissued this year on Brownswood Recordings,the label owned by BBC Radio 1 DJ and taste-maker Gilles Peterson, and held up as a who’swho of the scene’s main players. Most areTomorrow’s Warriors alumni.
Tuba virtuoso Theon Cross, a member ofSons of Kemet, headlines a track informed bygarage and grime. Drummer Boyd, who worksacross everything from house and hip-hop tofree jazz and swing, leads a fusion jam.Afrobeat outfit Kokoroko (whose frontlinefeatures alto saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi, whowith Garcia is also a member of all-female jazzseptet Nerija) bring inner-London hues to their
horn-fuelled West African sound. There’s thehip-hop and Afrobeat influenced Ezra Collec-tive, which picked up the British jazz act of theyear award at the recent Jazz FM Awards. Andthe Maisha ensemble, with Garcia on sax andflute alongside guitarist Shirley Tetteh, blendingfree jazz over West African rhythms and servingit up with raw spiritual intensity. This isn’t jazz aswe know it, if jazz as we know it is doo-wop andblack tie and the Great American Songbook, butthen the album’s musical director, ShabakaHutchings, a reed player who works across electronica and grime and is certainly no jazz pu-rist, doesn’t call it jazz either.
Crucially, this is music made by a post-ravegeneration that understands dance culture,appealing to a younger audience on the basis ofjazz as a new energetic form, one that retains theelements of rebellion and freedom inherent injazz’s American origins but has an urban sound— an urban London sound — of its own.
“As young adults a lot of us [musicians] wouldgo to clubs together,” says Garcia. “So that worldmixing with our world had an effect, as did mix-ing with friends who were putting on nights thatcombined both, not for money but to get peoplecoming together.
“So now it’s like combining that attitude youhave in a club where the beat drops and you loseyour shit. That attitude, with live music.”
That attitude, combined with a mystical,Afro-futuristic dimension that harks back tofamed spiritual jazz musicians such as RolandKirk, Alice and John Coltrane, and the redoubt-able, astral-travelling Sun Ra (whose Sun RaArkestra, led by saxophonist Marshall Allen, isplaying the Melbourne Jazz Festival). This newcrop of British-based jazz players has benefitedfrom the spiritual jazz renaissance taking placein the US, with big-selling 2015 albums To Pimp aButterfly by Kendrick Lamar and The Epic byKamasi Washington reclaiming jazz as a black
American art form. (For his sold-out gig atLondon’s Roundhouse, Washington broughtHutchings onstage to improvise fierce saxsqualls alongside him).
London is one of the world’s most culturallyintegrated cities; little wonder, then, that soundsfrom Britain’s former colonies are beingembraced — reclaimed — by the scene.
Perhaps inevitably, with the spectre of Brexit,wildly unpopular among British youth, loominglarge, and the effects of the Windrush immi-gration scandal rippling on, this young Londonjazz scene is also highly politicised, creatingmusic intended to provoke and galvanise:Sons of Kemet’s acclaimed new album, YourQueen is a Reptile, fires a shot at the British mon-archy as it celebrates a series of “queens” fromthe African diaspora.
“I think we’re all writing very politicallycharged music, whether we like to talk about itor not,” says Garcia. “Shabaka also has lyricistsand rappers that come onstage, but when youdon’t have lyrics people have to work it out ornot, you know? With all this craziness we live in,when you’re in the room with us it’s a chance toimmerse yourself in feelings shared by everyonethere, and also to be present. To be in the now.”
Hence the title of her EP When We Are: “Ilove to be present in the knowledge of what itmeans to be present. Each improvisation I do isabout that. So When We Are is about being fullyengaged with what is going on, not texting orfilming on your phone, but looking after thenow. It is also a celebration of ‘we’. The ‘we’ ofcommunity. Musicians don’t give a shit aboutscenes. But being among people I’ve known along time, who support and nurture you, havethe same sort of background as you,” Garciasays, flashing a smile: “Now, that is everything.”
Nubya Garcia performs at Jazzlab on Thursday for Melbourne International Jazz Festival.
I THINK WE’RE ALL WRITING VERY POLITICALLY CHARGED MUSIC, WHETHER WE LIKE TO TALK ABOUT IT OR NOT
NUBYA GARCIA
Written by Robert Kronk and Nadine McDonald-Dowd
Directed by Bridget Boyle
Queensland Theatre, debase productions and JUTE Theatre Company co-production
Until 23 JuneCremorne Theatre, QPAC
Tickets 1800 355 528 queenslandtheatre.com.au
Production sponsor
One club, One familyOne NRL grand final
– Artshub
