Drummer and producer Yussef Dayes widens the lens in contemporary jazz for open minds. Vibrant, energetic and powerful, Yussef’s solo debut album BLACK CLASSICAL MUSIC is an instant gem.
In an attempt to cover the most broadening landscapes our music has to offer before the sun dives below the horizon for 2023, we delve into the world of contemporary jazz. More specifically, jazz hailing from the southern side of London, here in the UK.
With the likes of Ezra Collective and their Mercury Award breaking the door down in providing an audience to contemporary jazz, many smooth-joint rarities have managed to receive the same gleaming polishing as any other project to the oblivious.
Scooping up West African rhythms to the sultry quavers of grime and rhythm, Yussef is a tour-de-force behind the drums. The technical prowess in booming outbursts to subtle off-kilter grooves is equal to the sheer intensity and emotion he brings to his throne.
Dayes was first head-hunted during the meteoric rise of duo Black Focus. A duo comprised of Dayes and keyboardist Kamaal Williams, the project was a shorthand expression to what Dayes can conjure up.
Black Classical Music is a smooth indie jazz rarity of dazzlement. Where musical experimentation is second nature and collaborations become the norm, the closed-book low tones of Rust with Tom Misch and the electric Marching Band with Masego bring the best in terms of bones and drums. A wonderful partnership of rhythm and colour.
The opener is a parting of doors; a welcomed flourish with a champagne flute; it’s a mammoth composite of throwing all the right paints on a canvas. Vessels of music, Venna and Charlie Stacey lead the successive mentions; both dominating in their own right on keys and saxophone. Accompanied with Yussef’s whirlygig of African bongos, timbales and traditional; it is an outrageous ear biscuit for jazz lovers, both new and seasoned.
Highlights drift into morning latte indulgences with Turquoise Galaxy making synths sound quizzical in the jazz sphere. While The Light is a cognitive meditation on familial links as voicenotes from the artists’ own daughter Bahia are played behind a smooth backdrop.
We hear more jungle and African influences in his drumming palette on Chasing the Drum, really making it obvious that he was indeed taught by royalty in mentor Billy Cobham – Miles Davis’s drummer – at the age of four. Four. It should be no wonder to many then, to the lengths he takes on his 19-track feature length debut. While Chasing the Drum bends into the lavish extremities of such an instrument, Raisins Under the Sun – partnered with Shabaka Hutchings – expels the subtleties of such an instrument; indulging the underrated prowess of playing quiet.
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