Pictured: Moses Boyd (Photo credit: Zuri Jarrett-Boswell)
When we look for the reasons behind the popularity of music, sometimes we miss the most obvious - pure visceral pleasure. “It’s a great feeling being a drummer because you have to be inside every musician and be able to kind of glue it all together", says Moses Boyd.
"You have to see the musical piece as an overall shape and arc and sometimes you shape it and sometimes you respond to how the musicians want to shape it. But you’re the catalyst at all times."
"People sometimes say “sorry I didn't give you a solo", but I feel like I’m soloing all the time because I’ve gotta look after you and look after you and make sure this is working and push or pull the rhythm, so it’s a great feeling and a great responsibility. Definitely a high all the time. It’s a power trip really!
“You're dictating the rhythm, also the time and the feel. If you listen to a song by Miles Davis with one drummer and the same song with another drummer, the feel is determined a lot of the time by the rhythm section which, at the core, is the drummer. So a drummer has a lot of power to change the overall sonic sound and feel of any song at any given time.”
Wall of Sound
For Emma Smith, the feeling of singing in front of a big band is incomparable: “It’s just like a wall of sound behind you and there’s nothing more liberating than being at the forefront of that. It honestly feels like the wind is in your hair because the brass instruments are so loud.
“It just sort of hits the back of your head and you get this force behind you which gives you unmatchable confidence and unmatchable liberation. It’s really an extraordinary experience.”
Tuba player Theon Cross is attracted to the pure freedom found in the sonic conversation: "The freedom of improvisation. I always was attracted to that. Being able to be free within a context. I have always loved that.
"I love dance music really and jazz has always been the foundation of that. It’s a rhythmic music. Most of the music that I like derives from that. I thought studying it would help me in all aspects of music.
"It’s the freedom of it. The democracy. The social aspects of it – learning to play with people: the idea that you can meet up with people that you’ve never met before and make music with them because you study the art is a beautiful thing, man."
It is this creative freedom and room for spontaneity that captivates musicians and led legendary drummer Buddy Rich to comment that "the only true creative musician is a jazz musician."
In the experience of Kareem Dayes of United Vibrations, the acclaimed London band and festival favourite, playing music live is more of an existential experience: "I love that it’s us. It’s our identity. It reflects who we are and all the things that influence us, and I think only in London in the 21st century would you get that combination of things."
In this way, a United Vibrations gig is not just about music, it is a statement of being: "I guess when we’re playing our songs we’re expressing something that is personal but universal: yourself and the wider community."
It was the great Louis Armstrong who would prove to be the inspiration for Al Ryan, bandleader and broadcaster, to take up the trumpet and begin his lifelong love affair with the music: "I remember watching thinking "What is this! This is incredible!"
Jazz was not especially popular in the east of Ireland at that time, but this would be the catalyst that would change the direction of his life.
"I was maybe seven or eight years old and it hadn't been on my radar. But that was it, the bug bit."
And the bug has appeared all over the UK including Soweto Kinch's Birmingham and finds an especially strong home in Manchester with popular venues such as 'Band on the Wall' hosting some of the UK's most talented artists such as composer, trumpeter and DJ, Matthew Halsall.