When: 12th – 14th July 2024
Where: Moseley Park and Pool, Moseley, Birmingham, England
“Celebrate good times, come on (Let’s celebrate)
Celebrate good times, come on (Let’s celebrate)”
Despite the England men’s football team falling at the very last hurdle in the Euros, these sentiments certainly ring true as the American funk heavyweights Kool & the Gang bring the 15th edition of Mostly Jazz Funk & Soul to a most jubilant close with their smash hit single from 1980, ‘Celebration.’ Held in beautiful parkland less than two miles from Birmingham city centre, this annual event once again proves to be a most warm, welcoming and joyful occasion.
This year’s Mostly had begun some 55 hours earlier under leaden skies, but any gloom is quickly dispersed by Dawn Richard. A singer from New Orleans, Richard can readily add musician, multimedia artist, animator, dancer, model, and entrepreneur to a long list of her many creative talents and backed here by her two energetic dancers with their carefully choreographed routines she brings an alternative electronic dimension to the jazz and soul roots of her home city. It’s an exhilarating full-on dance party at three o’clock in the afternoon and surely warrants a spot much later in the day and far higher up the bill. Her performance is the undoubted highlight of the day, if not the entire weekend.
Electronic dance music is a recurring theme on the opening day of this year’s festival, not least with a headlining show from the UK electronica pioneers Leftfield – hearing ‘Black Flute’, ‘Release The Pressure’, and ‘Inspection (Check One)’ rattled off in glorious succession you are reminded of what a seminal album Leftism was, and still is nearly 30 years after its release – but also from a raft of DJ sets right across the site featuring many luminaries from that twilight world including Mr Scruff, Ryan Hope from Gabriels and James Lavelle of UNKLE fame.
The association between jazz and dance is long-standing, both sharing central characteristics of rhythm and movement. And while the point at which jazz and dance music meet may be more recent it does illustrate where the boundaries of jazz have been even more radically broken down. It also shows Mostly Jazz Funk & Soul’s innovative approach towards its festival programming and continuing quest to reach out to new audiences by introducing different musical genres.
Whilst there was a positive emphasis upon dance music and club culture on the opening day honourable mentions should also be afforded to Moseley’s very own Ella More, the charismatic performer Antony Sziemerek, and Greentea Peng for pushing their respective parameters of neo-soul, indie hip hop, and psychedelic soul. For Sziemerek’s part, he remodels Sugarbabes’ ‘Overload’, complete with some squalling Death Disco guitar, and whilst Greentea Peng initially struggles with some early technical difficulties she then comes on strong with a startling interpretation of Shanks and Bigfoot’s ‘Sweet Like Chocolate’ before it haemorrhages into a dub-infused take on Groove Armada’s ‘Superstylin’.’
Saturday quickly slips into a much more mellow groove. Sofia Grant the vocalist and composer from London harnesses that vibe with a deeply organic set that leans heavily on the Extinction EP, her debut record from last September. The songs all embrace an environmental theme as Grant emotes with feeling and an elegiac splendour about the natural world and the chaos evoked by climate change.
One of the many great benefits of Mostly Jazz Funk & Soul is the fact that both of the main music stages are located right next to each other and the various acts are able to alternate seamlessly between the two without nary a pause for breath. It is, in fact, Musique Non Stop, as once suggested by Kraftwerk.
As such, local musician and composer Ashley Allen – evidencing Mostly’s ongoing commitment to the support and promotion of local artists – immediately follows Sofia Grant. Accompanied by his friends he opens with a radical reinvention of the Rodgers and Hammerstein standard ‘My Favourite Things’ from the musical The Sound of Music. It sets the scene for a highly inventive set that fuses gospel, jazz, hip hop, and soul.
There are many far worse things to do of a summer’s afternoon than to hang out at the Off Piste stage for a couple of hours. It is bliss just lying there on the grassy slope looking out over the ornamental lake that forms the centrepiece to this idyllic park whilst listening to a series of soul and disco classics from the ‘70s brought to us by the Leftfoot DJs Thea Regan B2B Molly Lou. Hearing Gwen McCrae’s ‘Keep The Fires Burning’ followed soon afterwards by Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ has to be one of life’s great pleasures.
The sun is out and Thumpasaurus raise the temperature even further. They are clearly not just another band from LA. Dressed in their white jump suits and bearing a passing resemblance to The Baseball Furies, one of the gangs in the 1979 film The Warriors, frontman Lucas Tamaren tells us Thumpasaurus play “mostly jazz.” He must be referring to the festival itself because their stock in trade is a heady mix of funk and R&B. Their hugely enjoyable slice of maverick lunacy concludes with a revelrous ‘Space Barn’.
The Blackbyrds were formed in 1973 by the legendary jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd and two of the American jazz funk band’s original members Keith Killgo and Joe Hall are still with them today. More than half a century in the business has not diminished any of their fire and power and they deliver a wonderfully slick and seasoned performance including Byrd’s majestic ‘(Fallin’ Like) Dominoes’. They are rightly called back for an encore and duly oblige with ‘Rock Creek Park.’ Its joyful refrain of “doing it the park, doing it after dark” is wonderfully fitting.
“Is there hip hop in the house?” asks Brendan Grey, MC and frontman of the group Super Duty Tough Work. Well, there certainly is now as the collective from Winnipeg, Manitoba win over hearts and minds with a set shot through with a blazing political spirit. Using events from the past to inform the present and paying suitable homage to the late American rapper J Dilla, their performance is a potent reminder of the troubled times in which we now live.
Saturday night’s headliner Yussef Dayes cements his place as one of this generation’s most thrilling performers. With his band the Experience, the south London-based musician demonstrates why he is in the vanguard of the contemporary jazz movement by delivering a set high on modernism, technical ability, and unquestionable energy. Dayes’ drumming possesses an innate vibrant quality, highlighted by his beautifully restrained power and the clear, calm authority he has around his kit. It is the perfect end to a perfect day.
By early Sunday afternoon, anticipation for the Euros final tonight is growing, especially amongst the many English and possibly one or two Spanish fans who are in the crowd. But before that there is still plenty of music to enjoy. Two young female singers ease everyone into the day. First CHERISE, making a welcome return to Mostly a decade after first appearing here as a teenager. She blends her own material with a couple of sublime covers – Nora Jones’ ‘Sunrise’ and Stevie Wonder’s ‘My Cherie Amour’ – the versatility of her stunning jazz-soul voice equally comfortable with both. Then it’s the turn of Ni Maxine. Her exquisite vocal delivery bears favourable comparison with the late great American soul singer Minnie Riperton as she captures the right balance between consciousness and self-determination in Billie Holiday’s classic ‘God Bless The Child.’
The British R&B musician and soul singer James Hunter may have been around for the best part of 30 years now but has lost none of his ability to capture the essence of 60’s soul music, no more so than on his own ‘Let the Monkey Ride.’ The UK Afro-Jazz 9-piece band Nubiyan Twist fronted by Tom Excell and singer Aziza Jaye keep Sunday’s gathering momentum going with a dynamic, globally inspired set that includes a couple of cracking cuts where they had previously collaborated with the Scottish composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist corto.alto – who just happens to be up next on the second stage – and Seun Kuti, the youngest son of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti.
corto.alto is the musical vehicle driven by the Glaswegian, Liam Shortall. En route to the Midlands he has picked up six other musicians and together they give us the performance of the day. They possess swagger, charm, a communal bottle of Buckfast wine, and an unerring collective ability to deconstruct and immediately reconstruct the very fabric of contemporary jazz fusing it with elements of the avant garde, progressive rock, heavy metal, dub, distortion and electronica. To draw upon the vernacular of Shortall’s home city, corto.alto has a pure dead gallus approach to modern jazz.
Rest assured, with the Euro final suddenly looming very large it’s all going to be OK for the football fans inside Moseley Park tonight because Mostly Jazz Funk & Soul has got it covered. There’s a big screen set up in the tennis courts near the entrance to the park, whilst over on Off Piste the stage has been commandeered by three smaller TV screens.
Disappointment sadly awaits for most of those who watch the game but any deflated spirits are soon lifted by Kool & the Gang whose string of disco-pop bangers have been filling dancefloors across the globe for more than 40 years now. Led by Robert ‘Kool’ Bell – the only surviving original member of the band – they leave their biggest guns until last, firing off a tremendous three-song valedictory salute with ‘Ladies Night’, an extended ‘Get Down on It’ – complete with that other 70’s essential, the drum solo – and finally, of course, ‘Celebration.’
Over three brilliant days and nights Mostly Jazz Funk & Soul has produced yet another incredibly varied line-up of music that covers the festival’s perennial staples of jazz, funk, and soul but this year also embraces dance, disco, R&B, hip hop, and most other points in between. With each passing year the musical bill broadens incrementally, whilst remaining true to its core spirit. Add in a wide range of workshops, arts, crafts, a selection of Birmingham’s most loved street food and drinks vendors, and a brilliant relaxed and incredibly friendly atmosphere and you have an unqualified recipe for success.
Photos: Simon Godley
More photos of Mostly Jazz Funk & Soul Festival 2024 are here:
