The mission of the Kokoroko (and their great teaching)
It should always be like this: experience music as a need. The one that pushed Kokoroko, among the most innovative and interesting groups of the new British jazz (or post-jazz, if you prefer) scene, to set up a band to recover the legacy of Afrobeat and make it relevant againin a long interview granted to the New Musical Express they summarize it like this: “If we don’t play this music, then it means that a piece of our culture will be lost”.
In short, that of the London collective made up of musicians of African origins, but who grew up in London and have always been fully immersed in the artistic and musical climate of the British capital, is a real one.missionof which the new EP “Get the message” represents a new step. The record will be released on November 1st next, two years after the 2022 debut with “Could we be more”, also produced by Brownswoodthe label of Gilles Petersonwho launched them: it was 2018 when the iconic DJ and radio speaker considered one of the most influential personalities of the media village across the Channel included them in a compilation dedicated to the new London jazz scene which included, among others, also the Ezra Collective, who today collect performances on the stages of the main international festivals. The following year the video in which they played their “Abusey Junction” in the Brownswood headquarters, between jazz, Afrobeat, soul and Caribbean rhythms, began to circulate among professionals thanks to word of mouth. The Guardian dedicated a space to him in its columns, highlighting the Kokoroko as a group to keep an eye on. The song today has exceeded 70 million streams worldwide on Spotify, and on YouTube it has approximately 60 million plays. Not bad.
They didn’t lose their nature. Six years after “Abusey Junction” Sheila Maurice-Grey (trumpet, vocals), Anoushka Nanguy (trombone, vocals), Chelsea Carmichael (sax), Tobi Adenaike-Johnson (guitar), Yohan Kebede (keyboards and synthesizers), Duane Atherley (bass), Onome Edgeworth (percussion ) and Ayo Salawu (drums) they continue to move on those frequencies. “Mainstream music is vocal-driven and instruments are usually just a supporting element. Our music, however, reverses this pattern: the voice is treated like any other instrument”, they explain. Onome Edgeworth and Sheila Maurice-Grey, the two minds of the collective, say they founded Kokoroko as a response “to the lack of representation of traditional African music coming through the lens of Africans growing up in the UK”: “We asked ourselves: ‘What would our traditional music sound like if it came from London, where there is a huge melting point of cultures? And what would it sound like if it came from our perspective?’” They answered the questions with their music, which fascinated fans from all over Europe.
The new EP “Get the message”, full of psychedelic grooves that seem to emerge from the cornerstones of Afrobeat, the genre of which Fela Kuti was the greatest master, was anticipated by the single “Three piece suit”, in which the singer of Nigerian origins participated Azekel. The song – written by percussionist Onome and Azekel herself – is dedicated to their grandparents, who emigrated from Nigeria to London in the 1960s: an ode to their roots.
“Now we feel more confident in our ability to make an album, the pressure and anxiety are gone and we feel more confident in our ability to take a personal approach to writing. The EP deals with important themes related to relationships, not just romantic ones but all the ways we can connect with people, even what we might want from a relationship that doesn’t yet exist,” Kokoroko say. The EP will be promoted with a tour that will keep the collective busy between Europe and the United States in the coming months.
