The UK Jazz Map (aka The UK Jazz Family Tree)

It is the Monday after the Ezra Collective gig at the Sydney Opera House for Vivid and, like the 2663 or so others at that gig, I am still buzzing. What a show. What energy, positivity, and warmth — something that I have felt each of the four times now that I have seen Ezra play.

I wanted to update this post about the jazz map because some people who were at the Opera House gig may want to see “the diagram” that Femi Koleoso spoke about.

The diagram, or map, or family tree, was something that I drew up in 2018 (and have revised several times) to make sense of the emerging UK jazz scene. It was only ever intended as a personal project, but it has become much more than that, and has been the catalyst for some incredible connections to be made with the Ezra crew, and with many others on the map.

Here is a PDF that you can download and print for personal use. If you are interested in the genesis of the map, then read on. This is an updated post from the original 2018 post at my other Medium.

Genesis of the Jazz Map

It all started with Best of Bandcamp Jazz: September 2016. Three acts in this list sent me into a complete dizzy spin of exploration into the emerging UK jazz scene. As I explored, drawing the connections between all the bands helped me understand it all. As I jotted things down, the map grew and grew (see the first post for the development).

As I was playing this music I began to get more recommendations. The ones that most often came up were Moses Boyd, Nubya Garcia, Theon Cross, and Ezra Collective.

Notably, all of these players cite the jazz education foundation Tomorrow’s Warriors as a big influence on their development. Tomorrow’s Warriors focus on developing talent from the African diaspora and young women and girls. Femi said on Saturday night that in drawing the jazz map, I had seen something in Ezra that they didn’t even yet recognise in themselves. Yet all I did was pretty much draw down what Tomorrow’s Warriors and others had already recognised.

As the map developed, I attempted on the jazz map to use colour to distinguish individuals, bands, supporters (like Gilles Peterson), and those who had come up through Tomorrow’s Warriors. I didn’t always get it right, and in March 2018 Adrian Reid from the Jazz Warriors messaged me with a gentle correction to the map, as I had made a mistake on one of the early versions. I also received other suggestions for additions and corrections, not all of them as gentle as Adrian’s. At the time, I became so overwhelmed that I stopped doing versions and had to publish a few caveats to explain myself.

The last update I did in 2020 just after Ife Ogunjobi replaced Dylan Jones as the Ezra trumpeter. In the original post I said how people had suggested doing a crowd funding to get me some space to draw up a new version. At the time I really didn’t have the energy and now I am kind of glad I didn’t. Femi said over the weekend that I captured a particular moment in time, and I think that is the beauty of this map.

If you want to listen along to the tunes that fuelled the jazz map’s early versions, here is a playlist. This set was put together for a guest spot on Eastside Radio at the invitation of the late, great Paris Pompour. As always, Paris was curious to explore this emergent scene and invited me onto his show to talk about it.