After years of token nominations, the jazz world finally got its hands on Britain’s most prestigious music award in 2023 when Ezra Collective were named the winners of the Mercury Prize. Considering the field included festival headliners such as Arctic Monkeys, Fred again…, and Jessie Ware, the result was met with a general consensus of ‘who?’ But for those au fait with terms such as backdoor progressions, Coltrane changes, and Tadd Dameron turnarounds, the quintet’s victory was a long overdue recognition of a scene that’s changing the game.  

Led by polymath Femi Koleoso, Ezra Collective are just one of the countless London-centric acts who since the mid-2010s have been pushing the boundaries of jazz not only on a musical level, but culturally, too. Like many of their peers, the five-piece are largely of Black British heritage and grew up in a working-class environment more attuned to the sounds of grime, Afrobeats, and hip-hop than the genre their triumphant sophomore album Where I’m Meant to Be has helped to revolutionize.  

“London has such a melting pot of cultures, and the jazz musicians are able to react to that eloquently,” Koleoso once told The Guardian. And by incorporating these sounds of the streets – Kendrick Lamar’s jazz-inspired To Pimp A Butterfly was a particularly notable source of inspiration – they’re turning what’s often regarded as the music of the elite into something refreshingly accessible.   

One only has to look at the collective’s Spotify numbers for proof. No fewer than 26 tracks from their catalog have over a million streams (with the Loyle Carner-featuring “What Am I To Do?” racking up the highest at 17.2 million), a remarkable tally for a band occupying a relative niche. Their monthly listenership – which like much of the new breed largely skews toward the 18-34 age bracket – hit one million for the first time in December 2023, their Mercury Prize victory three months earlier no doubt alerting a whole new audience to their polyrhythmic charms. 

The Grammys gave the general scene a further credibility boost when it announced a brand-new category, Best Alternative Jazz Album, for its 2024 ceremony. The Recording Academy, who handed the inaugural trophy to Meshell Ndegeocello, defined the sound as “a genre-blending, envelope-pushing hybrid that mixes jazz with other genres.” What sets London’s ‘hybrid’ apart is its strong ties to Africa and the Caribbean, with its infusion of calypso, dub, reggae, soca, Afrobeats, and sound system culture reflecting the roots of its acts, many of whom were raised by first- or second-generation immigrants.

Just look at KOKOROKO, the eight-piece outfit who’ve built a sizable audience putting a dynamic modern spin on the West African music pioneered by the likes of Fela Kuti and one of the scene’s mentors Tony Allen. Interestingly, they are one of many London-based acts who have surpassed Ezra Collective’s impressive figures despite emerging in their wake. In fact, the meditative “Abusey Junction” can lay claim to being one of the scene’s biggest hits, accruing a colossal 68 million Spotify plays and 57 million YouTube views since its 2018 release. 

Drummer Yussef Dayes, who picked up a Best New Artist BRIT nomination and Best Album Ivor Novello Award earlier this year for solo debut Black Classical Music, is another, with over a million monthly listeners to his name. His technical wizardry, which incorporates everything from post-bop to psychedelia, has attracted 33 million YouTube views and 120k TikTok likes, while “Nightrider,” the standout from his 2020 collaborative LP with jazz-adjacent soulman Tom Misch, has been streamed on Spotify 47.5 million times.  

Dayes’ ever-growing success isn’t just confined to his homeland, either. Proving that Britain’s burgeoning jazz movement is garnering attention internationally, a higher proportion of his Spotify listeners (28.7%) hail from the United States. It’s a similar story with Alfa Mist (25.5%), the beatmaker bridging the gap between J Dilla and Theolonious Monk, and Sons of Kemet (24%), the now-defunct avant-garde jazz outfit formed by arguably the scene’s lynchpin. 

Born in London to a reggae poet father and raised in Birmingham and Barbados, Shabaka Hutchings has been instrumental in three forward-thinking supergroups, Sons of Kemet, Melt Yourself Down, and The Comet Is Coming, and enjoyed critical acclaim both with his own backing band The Ancestors and as a solo artist.

Taking in elements of punk, funk, electronica, and grime just to name a few, his genre-straddling approach has been instrumental in breaking down the old-fashioned stereotype which may have previously deterred new fans from embracing jazz. Little wonder, therefore, he’s been hailed as the Kamasi Washington of the UK explosion.  

Hutchings’ vast and varied discography is representative of a movement that thrives on collaboration. Forget Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Practically every artist in London’s new jazz community can be linked to each other via only a few steps, largely thanks to training grounds such as the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and Tomorrow’s Warriors. Co-founded in 1991 by musicians Gary Crosby and Janine Irons, the latter initiative was specifically designed to champion and celebrate diversity within the genre, and over the years, has welcomed practically every other alt-jazz purveyor through its doors.  

Inevitably, its plethora of graduates initially had to fight for performing space across the capital. If they weren’t established enough to headline the legendary Ronnie Scott’s, opportunities were few and far between. However, in recent years, a whole host of venues have acknowledged the lure of live jazz, from Japanese eatery mu. to Hackney’s GROW. 

The floating party known as Steez was arguably the most integral club night, its stagings across the capital in the early 2010s allowing word of mouth to spread among a much more diverse than usual crowd. Meanwhile, the Dalston Jazz Bar, a nightlife mainstay since the turn of the century, Camden Town’s legendary Jazz Cafe, and the intimate Night Tales Loft are utilizing the power of TikTok to draw in audiences who may previously have found jazz too far outside their comfort zone. 

Social media, in general, has been pivotal in the movement’s development, increasing exposure to a genre that the mainstream largely ignored and allowing its personalities and sense of style to shine through. While no one’s going to challenge Selena Gomez as the music industry‘s Instagram don, the follower tallies for Dayes (398k), Ezra Collective (117k), and KOKOROKO (85k) are nothing to be sniffed at. “The music never looked as cool or good as it sounded,” drummer Moses Boyd told Jazzwise, explaining the challenge today’s players faced in converting younger fans. “That’s the big shift that a lot of us were conscious of – and how we attacked that status quo.” 

Gilles Peterson, who founded the jazz-centric radio station Worldwide FM in 2016 to further help promote the genre, and Jamie Cullum, an artist in his own right whose BBC Radio 2 weeknight jazz show regularly pulls in nearly one million listeners, are ensuring that the new sphere also maintains a more traditional media presence. So is Teju Adeleye, the writer and former host of NTS Radio’s Floating Roofs jazz show. “There’s an accessible, anti‑hero energy that feels like sweet vindication for a music that should be for everyone, but has felt locked away and preserved only for a few,” she told The Guardian about the new breed of artists. “They’ve liberated the sound.” 

And they've done so largely without any major record company support, with specialist labels such as Jazz: Refreshed and Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings allowing their rosters far more creative freedom while simultaneously fostering a stronger sense of community: the former stages the annual one-dayer JAZZ RE:FEST, while the latter runs the Future Bubblers Academy, a program responsible for guiding acts like electro-jazz producer Michael Diamond and jazz-soul chanteuse Yazmin Lacey.

If the sheer amount of talent breaking through is a little overwhelming, then there are various beginners’ guides highlighting the cream of the crop. In 2018, Brownswood released We Out Here, a nine-track compilation boasting new material from most of the major players, including Nubya Garcia, Boyd, and Hutchings. Apple Music and Spotify have both curated perfect introductory lessons, too, with regularly updated playlists Jazz Scene: UK and Jazz UK, the latter keeping roughly 313k monthly listeners in the loop. 

Expect that number to grow as the mainstream continues to latch onto the sound. Grammy nominee Nao, multiple BRIT winner Emeli Sande, and Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen have all lent their talents to Ezra Collective. Blue Lab Beats graced the soundtrack of last year’s best rom-com "Rye Lane." And perhaps most notably, Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner was tapped up by Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood to join their experimental side-project The Smile.  

There’s still some work to do in terms of expanding the new jazz crop’s reach. Although the majority of artists are of mixed heritage, their Spotify audience is still predominantly Caucasian. And only a few names – MOBO Award winner Zara McFarlane, Afropunk jazz harpist Muva of Earth, and Beyoncé co-sign cktrl – attract more female listeners. But with new initiatives – such as Ella Knight’s young women platform Madame Jazz – popping up all the time, the demographics will no doubt continue to evolve. 

The same applies to its sound. With new homegrown labels such as Tenderlonious’ progressive 22a continuing to push things forward, London’s status as the alt-jazz epicenter certainly looks set to stay intact. And dance music may well be the next frontier. Berlioz, aka beatmaker Ted Jasper, is currently making waves with a lush fusion of electronica and jazz self-described as “if Matisse made house music.” The aforementioned Knight also went down a storm with a Boiler Room set that blurred similar musical boundaries, while at times, genre-straddling percussionist Chiminyo’s recent album Infinite Reflections sounded like it had been gatecrashed by deep house maestros Disclosure. 

“The stigma that jazz music has will be fully broken,” a confident Koleoso predicted to Music Week five years before his band’s Mercury win, suggesting he’s just as much a Nostradamus as a musical prodigy. Indeed, no longer seen as just old-fashioned or stuffy, jazz is now the coolest, and arguably most essential, sound of the London underground. 

Visualizations by Nicki Camberg and cover image by Crasianne Tirado. Data as of Aug. 13, 2024.