Young Jazz Heroes
JAZZ. THE WORD and the music it represents have been fetishised, couched in clichés and drained of meaning. Everyone thinks they know what it means. And everyone is wrong. But a bunch of young Londoners – with musical backgrounds as diverse as the city they call home – are redefining what jazz can mean here, and what it can mean now.
“There’s something magical when a band comes together and creates something in a limited period of time,” says Shabaka Hutchings, saxophonist and musical director of We Out Here – a new project showcasing one of the capital’s sharpest subcultures. “The ego of the individuals doesn’t get in the way.”
Shabaka sits in the slanted light of a yard outside a studio in London Fields. He’s tall, wears glasses and has an African-style weaved garment draped around his shoulders. His
