‘People call me the godfather of fusion’: the return of jazz-funk keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith
Over the last 60 years, keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith has made an artform out of countering some of jazz music’s loudest heavyweights...
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- Apr 17
Director Nida Manzoor: ‘For teenage girls, everything feels so intense it’s almost violent’
The muse can be a fickle thing to find, but Nida Manzoor’s inspiration has always been close to home. “My sister, Sanya, is only a year...
- Apr 13
Dave Okumu transforms the personal into a conversation
Dave Okumu is concerned about community. “Everyone is encouraged to go down a solitary road at the moment, where other people don’t...
- Mar 6
Jazz-soul singer Lady Blackbird: ‘I feel like I’m in my own biopic!’
“I’m pretty damn persistent,” Marley Munroe laughs. “It’s been a long, often gruelling road, but I’m finally here.” Munroe, AKA Lady...
- Feb 20
Actor Bukky Bakray: the Rocks star hitting the big time
At 15, Bukky Bakray was in drama class at school in east London, working her way through lines she can no longer remember, when she...
- Jan 9
Kumail Nanjiani: ‘It would take a lot of effort not to run away before every show'
At 44, the comic and actor Kumail Nanjiani is best known for playing different versions of himself. His 2017 breakthrough in the...
- Jan 5
Duval Timothy: Life in Colour
Inside a converted south London shopfront sits a strange piano. Stripped of its black lacquer, with legs chiselled down to minimalist,...
- Dec 16, 2022
Fousheé: ‘It’s not acceptable for a Black woman to be angry’
For the past eight weeks, US singer-songwriter Britanny Fousheé has been spending her evenings screaming into the faces of filming teens....
- Dec 6, 2022
Actor Anjana Vasan: ‘We Are Lady Parts is about embracing your weirdness’
Actor Anjana Vasan, 35, was born in Chennai, India, and moved to Singapore when she was four. In 2011, she relocated to Cardiff to study...
- Nov 28, 2022
Jacob Collier: ‘I have so many ideas that I call it ‘creative infinity syndrome’
“One hundred thousand voices all singing together in harmony – that’s what gets me excited,” Jacob Collier says. “It’s an anthem that has...
- Nov 16, 2022
Maral: Aural Histories
For producer and DJ Maral, sampling is a deeply personal affair. “I see myself more as a listener than a producer,” she reveals over...
- Nov 9, 2022
Tom Skinner on the Smile, Sons of Kemet and going solo: ‘It gives me a blank slate to explore’
It has been a head-spinning year for drummer Tom Skinner. He has been crossing the globe touring new albums simultaneously with London...
- Nov 9, 2022
‘This isn’t a clickbait story of a white family with a black kid’: Jimmy Akingbola on growing up in
It is a typically sunny Los Angeles morning, with light cutting through the blinds, when Jimmy Akingbola greets me on a video call from...
- Nov 9, 2022
‘We captured lightning’ – documenting jazz hero Roy Hargrove
From the start of their 28-year friendship, Eliane Henri knew trumpeter Roy Hargrove was a genius. “I was 17 when I went to see his first...
- Oct 3, 2022
Louis Cole: ‘Funk is fun but with jazz you can just go wild’
Ever since he picked up a pair of drumsticks at eight years old and began playing along to a James Brown CD, Louis Cole has been chasing...
- Sep 27, 2022
Jake Blount on his Afrofuturist folk climate eulogy: ‘What would music sound like when we’re dead?’
When Florida security guard George Zimmerman was acquitted over his shooting of unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2013,...
- Sep 12, 2022
Violinist 4stringz on manifesting success & the importance of representation
Composer and producer 4stringsz has had an innate connection with the violin for as long as he can remember. “The first time I picked one...
- Sep 9, 2022
Sudan Archives: ‘In so many places in the world the violin brings the party’
Brittney Parks is on a mission “to show the Blackness of the violin”, she says. As a child in Ohio, she learned to play the instrument by...
- Aug 16, 2022
‘Maybe we’ll become a genre’: Wu-Lu, the punky lo-fi hip-hop star moving fast to transcend labels
You can hear the screaming from across the street. Through the window of a Brixton skate shop, two drummers are pounding away at a kit on...
- Aug 2, 2022
Rimzee on the price of being an independent voice
“I have always been a hustler,” Rimzee says. “Music comes second because even though people say that your dream will eventually pay you,...
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