By 2019, a new generation of UK jazz musicians was selling out venues across the world. Critics called it a renaissance.
But where did it come from? And what — exactly — does it mean to call this music British?
Is this British music?
What makes it British? Select everything that applies.
Before you see the history, write your prediction.
Who built the pathway that produced this music? What institutions, spaces, or people made it possible?
Your prediction is saved. You will see it again before the reveal.
—
The history looks different. ↓
Founded in 1991 by bassist Gary Crosby, Tomorrow's Warriors was a jazz education programme built for young Black and minority ethnic musicians excluded from conventional pathways. It met in community centres. It was cheap or free. It produced Moses Boyd, Nubya Garcia, and Shabaka Hutchings — the names on those festival line-ups.
↳ Without Tomorrow's Warriors, the personnel of the UK jazz renaissance is substantially different.
"Gary Crosby created an alternative pathway. Tomorrow's Warriors was doing what the system wasn't — giving these kids a musical home."
The Jazz Warriors were a large ensemble founded in 1986 — Courtney Pine, Cleveland Watkiss, Orphy Robinson — who played explicitly political jazz during the anti-apartheid era. They did not reach the mainstream. They stayed, taught, and mentored the generation that did. Their relative invisibility in the official story of British music is itself part of the argument.
↳ Courtney Pine appeared on the cover of The Wire in 1986. By the 1990s, mainstream coverage had largely moved on.
"That whole generation kept the flame going in a way that didn't get recognised. Courtney never stopped working."
Total Refreshment Centre in Dalston was a cheap rehearsal space, venue, and studio. Steam Down was a weekly Wednesday session in Deptford — part gig, part jam, part congregation. Affordable and open because they belonged to the scene, not to an institution. They created conditions for collaboration no conservatoire could replicate.
↳ Steam Down ran weekly for years before any of its participants received mainstream press coverage.
"Something was being created in real time, every week. Those spaces mattered enormously."
Before the Mercury Prize.
Before Glastonbury.
Before the broadsheets.
These appeared.
What do these images seem to be saying?
No explanation will follow. Your reading is the point.
For decades, the structures you have just read about operated without mainstream recognition. The music they produced was not considered important by critics, major labels, national broadcasters, or prize committees.
Then the same music — made by the same communities, through the same infrastructure — began to be celebrated by exactly the institutions that had previously ignored it.
Is that reclamation? Validation? Something else?
The neat story — exclusion, then recognition — breaks down here. The music did not change to earn mainstream approval. The mainstream changed its position. Whether that represents justice, co-option, or something more complicated is not a question with a clean answer.
At the start of this activity,
you decided this music was British.
You have now seen how it
travelled into British culture.
What exactly
was reclaimed?
Discuss.