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Dance, Dance, Dance

On the eve of release of Ezra Collective’s new album, band members Ife Ogonjobi and James Mollison talk high energy live shows, bedroom posters and recording the new album, Dance, No One’s Watching.

It’s something of an understatement to say that 2023 was a big year for Ezra Collective. Their unexpected win at the Mercury Prize generated not only the memorable and highly joyful image of a whole-band bundle when their name was declared but also an acceptance speech that placed their success in a community context, shouting out their youth club, Tomorrow’s Warriors, alongside friends and family. It was a very Ezra moment.

They’re topping off 2024 with the fruits of the past year’s labour – a third album written backstage and on tour buses and then recorded at the famous Abbey Road studios. Dance, No One’s Watching combines core Ezra ingredients of jazz and dub, hip hop, hi-life and salsa; worldwide dance music, Londonised. This is big welcoming dancefloor energy, with enough balm-songs to take you home afterwards – and to pick you up the next morning.

04.10.24

Words by Emma Warren

 

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It is, says bandleader Femi Koleoso, ‘a statement of freedom’. ‘This record says that you can be who you want to be, regardless of what’s around you, regardless of what people are saying, because on a deeper level – no-one is watching. Don’t let the perspective of someone else steal your joy.’

Formed in 2012 the band comprises North Londoner brothers Femi and TJ Koleoso, who hold the centre with drums and bass, alongside friends Ife Ogunjobi (trumpet), James Mollison (sax) and keyboard player Joe Armon-Jones. The band met as teenagers at Tomorrow’s Warriors, itself formed by musician Gary Crosby who’d been part of the highly influential 1980’s big band Jazz Warriors.

A key part of the late 2020’s wave of UK jazz alongside peers Moses Boyd and Nubya Garcia, the band released You Can’t Steal My Joy in 2019, and returned post-pandemic with Where I’m Meant To Be in 2022, which won them the Mercury the following year.

Dance, No One’s Watching is the product of the world tour that followed. It documents the dancefloors they generated during live shows, or the six back-to-back shows at the Blue Note Jazz club in NYC, or their fiercely joyful Tiny Desk. And of course, their ultra-memorable show in Nigeria when they played the New Afrika Shrine, which was opened by Fela Kuti’s eldest daughter Yeni and eldest son, Femi, in 2000. It is, however, a very London record, drawing from the sounds and the attitude of the city.

‘The most London thing you could do is break every rule’, says Femi. ‘That to me is the London accent of the record. That’s the “home” element, that’s where the brutal confidence comes from. We’re Londoners.’

Given that the Ezra boys remain connected to the dancefloor as music lovers as well as music-makers, it also reflects their nights out post-show, between shows and at collective celebrations like Carnival. From the title on, it’s a clear declaration of an intention to move people. “One of the tracks I wrote,” adds tenor saxophonist  James Mollison, “was originally called Quick Turn, and it was inspired by a move Femi used do on the dancefloor. He’d do some robot thing, do a little turn. I’ve got this one picture of us, from when we were partying in New Orleans and he’s got this face on that’s a typical Femi from when he does the quick turn. I was thinking about the movement, the physical movement of bodies on the dancefloor. It’s a bouncy moment. As soon as the bassline kicks in, TJ starts moving.” He pauses and smiles, remembering. “Straight away, it’s like ‘Let’s go!””

Credit: Ife Ogunjobi

Hey both. The album is coming out later this week. What has today involved for you?

James: I went to the saxophone shop. The ring where I attach the strap was getting worn down and I was worried that in these high-intensity gigs it’d break and fall off. I also bought a new case. I feel a bit emotional, I’m not gonna lie. I’ve had that case for over ten years. You carry something like that around every day.  I just left it in the shop and it feels really weird.

Ife: Today’s more of a rest day. Tomorrow we’ve got a rehearsal, preparing for the in-store shows.

I certainly took note when I saw those clips of Shabaka on the treadmill with his saxophone. I got a sense of the physical work that a musician has to do, so that you can play at that level…

Ife: The Ezra gigs are intense energy-wise. We’re jumping up, running around the whole stage, doing cartwheels and back flips. It’s becoming an extreme sport. We have to balance the performance with the musicality, that we’re locked in, the five of us. But that we’re looking after ourselves on tour.

James: I’ve started stretching in the morning because these gigs are starting to take a toll on my body. I’ve got a whole routine to make sure I can meet the physical demands of the gig.

Credit: ZeroShub

Will you tell me about one of the tracks, maybe your nightbus-referencing N29?

Ife: We just jammed some ideas in the soundcheck in Amsterdam, recorded it on the voicememo app. Then when we came to make the new music, we came back to it.

Did you have any music-related posters when you were growing up, on your walls?

James: I had one picture of Courtney Pine, which I chopped out of a magazine. I cut his outline out. He had a hat on, the soprano in his hand. He just looked really cool.

Ife: I went to Newport Jazz Festival when I was younger. I got a couple of jazz posters, Louis Armstrong or something like that.

You had your instrumental forebears on your walls! If you’re thinking about billboards, what is your relationship to poster culture and to visual information out on the street?

Ife: To have something that big, it feels like you own a little slice of London for the time it’s up. Me and James saw one in Queens Road Peckham. It’s another full circle moment to see the five of us, we own that bit of London.

James:  Personally, seeing friend’s billboards when you drive past or walk under that bridge on Rye Lane and Yusuf [Dayes] is there, or KOKOROKO, it’s like heyyyy! There’s something special about seeing your friends up there. It was a faraway thought when we were younger, and to see a physical manifestation – it’s not just my mum who’s going to see it. I love how eye-catching they are. It’s old school, a cool way of getting people’s attention in the real world.

Ife: One of the biggest things for me, is artwork. I buy vinyl, 50% for the artwork. So having a billboard, it’s like that but times ten.

Credit: Temi Adegbayibi

Can we take it back, earlier, to before you were touring internationally? I’d love to hear about some of the places that helped give a platform to Ezra and other artists that came through around the same time. Maybe Brainchild, which was a festival set up by a group of friends in their late teens, or monthly south London night Steez, which ran in the mid-2010s? 

James: Steez, we had a bit of a hard time. It wasn’t the easiest gig for us. Then Shabaka came on straight after us with Comet Is Coming, and I saw what he did to that crowd. It was like ‘woah’. It was cool to see someone do that so directly. Brainchild Festival, it must have been 2017, sunset. We just hit the gig right and everyone was just losing their shit. One of the first international gigs we did was in Poland, at a jazz festival. It was loads of middle-aged Polish people. The gig was at midnight or something, it was a long programme, everyone was sat down, very polite. We weren’t sure if they liked it for half the gig. Then right at the end, maybe the last ten minutes, people started getting up. A transformation happened. I don’t think they were expecting it. I wasn’t expecting it. But we moved them, in that moment.

I see you as coming through a part of UK club culture where it just happened that the people providing the sounds were musicians, not a DJ. What do you know as a musician, because of the dancefloors you’ve played?

Ife: I think, as a band, one of the powers that we have that a DJ doesn’t, is that we can change the music. The DJ can play the song, but we can mould it for that dancefloor. If we want to get people jumping and partying, to a jazz song, we can play it, to fit that mood.  We’ve found ways to use our instruments to create that same function as the DJ.

James: We all used to go to University of Dub at Scala. Serious soundsystems like Saxon.

As a band, you have a relationship with the soundsystem known as Channel One…

Ife: That music is so synonymous with the Ezra sound. Femi loves Channel One. Joe too. It’s so beautiful we have a remix with them off the last album. That’s a great example of how we’ve been influenced by dancefloor culture, and it’s a full circle moment. It’s influenced us and we’ve given back to it.

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