Review : Jazz Verse Jukebox/ Soweto Kinch

Soweto Kinch

Photo from Oxford Jazz Festival by Barker Evans. All Rights Reserved

Jazz Verse Jukebox featuring Soweto Kinch.
(Ronnie Scott's. Part of 2011 Britjazz Festival. Review by Sarah Ellen Hughes)

The Jazz Verse Jukebox is a feast of jazz, spoken word and creative poetry which has a monthly residency upstairs in Ronnie’s Bar. For the third Brit Jazz Festival, this eclectic and original evening was invited downstairs for one of the most diverse and entertaining nights I have had the pleasure of appreciating at Ronnie Scott’s.

The hostess for the Jukebox is the charismatic Jumoké Fashola – charming, entertaining, and a little bit nuts! Her excitement of being “downstairs at Ronnie’s” could hardly be contained, as she opened the evening with her trio – Simon Wallace on the piano, Winston Clifford on drums and Davide Mantovani on bass. They performed a sublime I’m A Stranger, and a low-down and dirty Colour Purple which stylistically suited Fashola to a T, getting the crowd whooping and stamping – and this was only the second number!

Appropriately, this gig featured a couple of tunes written by Simon Wallace and Fran Landesman, which Fashola performed as a tribute to the late lyricist and poet, who had performed at Jazz Verse a number of times over the last two years. The beaming smile disappeared for a moment for a wonderfully moving Scars - a gorgeous but little-known Landesman creation. The idea of the Jukebox is to host a melange of poets, backed or not by the Jukebox trio. Highlights included a rather superb young poet called Holly McNish who took to the stage solo and performed a brilliantly clever poem in French and English, the whole room in the palm of her hand. Zena Edwards was a delight too, preferring to offer her poetry over the backing of the trio which elevated it to a higher level, allowing her to feed off rhythms and melody. She also performed deftly on the kalimba (thumb piano) and sang in Zulu, with a voice reminiscent of Lizz Wright and Lauryn Hill. It was inspiring.

I felt refreshed by listening to the poets and their verses. Somehow, the spoken word grabs you with its relevance and rhyme, parts of which I found to be moving and hilarious in equal measure. The honesty and transparency of the poets’ words was quite something, and I didn’t expect to feel as uplifted as I did.

Soweto Kinch finished the night off with a bit of freestyle, incorporating the audience’s offerings of words beginning with the letters of JUKEBOX. How you fit the words jazz, utopia, kinetic, existentialism, Boris, onomatopoeia and Xanadu into a rap I’ve no idea! But somehow he managed it. And in style too. I'll be tuning into the Jazz Verse jukebox again.


www.sarahellenhughes.co.uk / www.ronniescotts.co.uk

Preview: Jazzverse Jukebox with Soweto Kinch

Sarah Ellen Hughes previews the Jazzverse Jukebox with Jumoke Fashola and Soweto Kinch on Sunday August 7th at Ronnie Scott's

The Jazzverse Jukebox – a monthly event in Ronnie Scott’s upstairs bar – is a creation of singer and broadcaster Jumoké Fashola and her jazz trio, which is “designed to stimulate the senses, soothe the soul and energise the eardrums.”On Sunday 7th August, as part of the Brit Jazz Fest season, the event will migrate downstairs and join forces with the formidable talents of saxophonist/MC Soweto Kinch.

Soweto Kinch has been adorned with awards ever since he won the Montreux Jazz Saxophone competition in 2002. From then he has picked up three BBC jazz awards, two MOBOs and a Mercury Music Prize nomination for his album in 2003. Not bad for someone who is only just in his thirties, and originally studied Modern History at Oxford, hoping to become a journalist!

The rest of the show is packed full of some of the UK’s best singers and ‘spoken word artists,’ including Charlie Dark and Sh’maya, ranging in styles from pop to hip-hop and grime.

Then there’s the host - acclaimed singer, and award-winning radio and television broadcaster, Fashola has performed in every genre of singing perceivable, including solos in Handel’s Messiah and The Wizard of Oz. Her rich and mellow voice has a clear influence of gospel and a hint of the blues.

jumokefashola.com / ronniescotts.co.uk

Review: Soweto Kinch at the Oxford Jazz Festival

Soweto Kinch
(Oxford Town Hall, 22nd April 2011, part of Oxford Jazz Festival, review by Hamish Birchall; Photo credit: Barker Evans)

Multi award-winning alto sax virtuoso Soweto Kinch topped the bill last night at the third Oxford Jazz Festival, a four-day Easter treat with over 50 performances, talks, interviews and workshops in 32 venues.

The ornate, cathedral-like space of Oxford Town Hall reverberated to Kinch's exuberant fusion of jazz, hip-hop and MC rap. His intelligent and humorous introductions quickly established a warm rapport with the audience, and the thoughtful and creative spirit behind the music.

The evening's programme was taken from his third and most recent album 'The New Emancipation', a musical exploration of the idea of freedom.

A soulful sax cadenza opened the show, morphing into the medium-slow funk of 'Never Ending', with hints of a reggae drop-beat. Drummer Graham Godfrey ('The Big G') expertly navigated varying time signatures with crackling snare accents, Karl Rasheed-Abel delivered a solid, subterranean bass, guitarist Femi Temowo supplied the first of many mellifluous and apparently effortless solos, not to mention a beaming smile that lasted all evening. The audience was hooked.

Interviewed days before by Julian Joseph on BBC R3's 'Jazz Line-up', Kinch talked about his influences, ranging from Delius to Ellington and Booker Little. His idea was 'to embrace the whole gamut of African diaspora expression to tell this story...'. If it is not always entirely clear how the music and these ideas connect, there is no doubting the sincerity of the project.

'Trying to be a star', had Temowo doubling on backing vocals while Kinch rapped a tale of futile striving for celebrity. Rasheed-Abel was effective on electric bass this time, and again drummer Godfrey shone with a series of increasingly intense fills.

'An ancient worksong' followed, appropriately to a slow shuffle beat, then 'A people with no past', a headlong post-bop tumble seemingly on the edge of chaos but with bravura solos from Temowo and Kinch . The set closed with a dramatic change of mood, 'The love of money', a brooding, lumbering number, Kinch again in declamatory vocal mode.

The second half began with 'Trade', a lazy swing groove. Kinch and Godfrey exchanged rhythmic phrases, and Rashid-Abel took a lyrical and inventive double-bass solo. 'Axis of Evil' had Kinch MC-ing: 'Is the Obama nation an abomination when it bombs a nation?', with echoes of the pioneering socio-political rap of 1970s Gil Scott-Heron.

An instrumental, 'Escape', was introduced as a deliberate excursion 'to a far less morose universe', and succeeded with a subtle but accessible melodic theme.




The evening closed with two audience participation numbers, obviously enjoyed by the whole band. 'Freestyle' showcased Kinch's formidable improvisatory rhyming skill. Members of the audience were invited to shout words beginning with the letters of 'Freedom'. These included 'eggs', 'David Cameron', 'Oxford' and 'mojo'. Improbably, and to the delight of all, Kinch wove them into a coherent and comic rap.

The finale, 'Raise your spirit', had the audience shouting 'spirit' as one, a tribute to Soweto Kinch's talent for fusing diverse genres, and bringing their otherwise fragmented audiences together in one joyful celebration.


Oxford Jazz Festival website