FEATURE:
Station to Station
PHOTO CREDIT: Sarah R. Harry-Isaacs for DJ Mag
Part Eight: Jamz Supernova (BBC Radio 1Xtra, BBC Radio 6 Music)
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I have not done a Station to Station…
PHOTO CREDIT: Sarah R. Harry-Isaacs for DJ Mag
for a little while now. Recently, the nominations for the ARIAS (Audio & Radio Industry Awards) came out. These radio awards recognise the best talent across various mediums and station. In the mix was BBC Radio 6 Music’s and BBC Radio 1Xtra’s Jamz Supernova. On her 1Xtra show, she unearths forward-thinking scenes and sounds from around the world, from alternative R&B and experimental Hip-Hop through to Jazz and leftfield Electronica. On BBC Radio 6 Music, we get a similar music of broad and fascinating sounds. In ARIAS (which happen on 26th May) categories, Jamz Supernova’s Somethin' Else for BBC Radio 1Xtra is up for Best Specialist Music Show. I have followed her on BBC Radio IXtra. She is also at BBC Radio 6 Music and providing a great show each Saturday. A hugely knowledgeable and passionate broadcaster, I think that she is going to go on to become a broadcasting icon. There are some many wonderfully engaging and influential broadcasters out there. I think that Jamz Supernova is among the very best. I want to bring in a couple of different interviews I found that, I think, provide some depth and detail when it comes to the Jamz Supernova story. In 2018, she spoke with CLASH. The MOBOs (Music of Black Origin) that year was not being broadcast and promoted widely – a sign that, perhaps, it was seen unimportant or lesser than the BRITs or Mercury Prize. This was touched on in the interview:
“Part of a growing wave of intersectional tastemakers dismantling and redefining the parameters of black music, you can rely on Jamz Supernova to soundtrack your late nights. Embedded within the fabric of BBC Radio 1Xtra, her own ethos is tantamount to the station’s: “I’ve been working at 1Xtra since I was 19. I’ve been privy to watching, learning and celebrating with them as they champion the alternative.”
From the more sanitised endorsement of crossover American rap and R&B, to the emergence of more localised, grass-roots music, Jamz fuses pirate radio informality with deft commentary. Yet the foundation for it all is rooted deep in her youth. “I’m a true ’90s baby. Growing up, it was about the back catalogues. It was a good time to be empowered, so maybe the strength of TLC and Missy rubbed off on me.”
A fully-fledged DJ in her own right, Jamz’s Future Bounce nights sees her veer further off-track, flexing her love for electronics - think Baltimore house and UK funky. The license is to thrill, but a trickier balancing act ensues: “It’s a risk when you’re repping underground club music; will the audience want you to play Drake all night? Are they here for the line-up? You’re educating the audience on new and old sounds. When you find that happy medium, it’s a sick experience.”
It’s meant she’s been able to cultivate a curatorial formula when cherry-picking artists. “It has to be personal. I have to love the music. I’m such an over-thinker, but it means nothing is done on a whim.” This is coupled with an unerring hunger to resist convention: “You can’t jump the gun. One great record doesn’t make them the next big thing. I want to hear growth, so I can grow with them.”
Jamz bemoans the lack of televised coverage for the R&B/soul category at the 2017 MOBOs, seemingly resonating with viewers, underscoring a desire to protect the integrity of the genre. “I respect what the MOBOs have done for music, but I was confused when it wasn’t a genre worthy of being shown. Sometimes when we think about ‘black music’ we forget to appreciate just how progressive it can be. In not showing the category, it set the illusion that the genre isn’t thriving.”
And according to Jamz it is the antithesis - her own personal forecast for 2018 emulates the forward-thinking trajectory of black music. “I laid a strong foundation in 2017, I’d like to keep building on that. Grow my radio show, more DJ gigs, more festivals, more Future Bounce parties across the UK, start my label, tour Asia and just enjoy the journey”.
I want to source heavily from an interview in DJ Mag from March. We get to learn so much about Jamz Supernova and how she has been spending lockdown. A wonderfully intriguing set-up and synopsis for the interview (“Jamz Supernova is spearheading the next generation of radio DJs with her residencies on BBC Radio 1Xtra and Selector Radio. While equally at home behind the decks in a club, she’s used her time in lockdown to bolster her Future Bounce label and perfect her radio shows, recording podcasts and voiceovers and helming TV docs along the way. It’s a career that Jamz seems born to do, but it hasn’t always been plain sailing for her — or happened overnight. Chal Ravens takes a (socially distanced) stroll in south London with the charming host to discuss her rise through the radio ranks, and finding her place as a club DJ”), it shone the spotlight on a broadcasting great:
“Born Jamilla Walters, raised in south London, and named by a chance encounter with a space encyclopaedia, Jamz Supernova is one of those terminally busy people for whom lockdown has meant a well-earned rest. Previously, on any given week, she might have been recording a voiceover, scouting new talent for Sony RCA or performing in Cape Town or Tbilisi.
As a DJ she moves fluidly between dancefloor riddims like kuduro, dancehall and UK funky, and radio-friendly electronic soul: broken beat, jazzy house and psychedelic hip-hop. Her record label Future Bounce straddles both, home to the nocturnal glow of singer-producer Sola as well as the pounding funk mutations of Bamz.
On 1Xtra, Jamz represents that modern strain of R&B often awkwardly described as “future” or “alternative”, with voices like NoName, Nubya Garcia and serpentwithfeet slotting into an offbeat lineage going back through Odd Future, The Neptunes and Erykah Badu. Her working rhythm is set by the show, which has gone out week after week during one of the hardest years in memory, including a special three-hour show at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in June.
“I always found comfort in the radio,” says Jamz, revealing a voice slightly less mellow and languorous than the one most people know. “Instinctively, I wake up and put the radio on. If I leave my dog alone I’m gonna put on the radio for him.”
At the start of the pandemic, she was sent some mics so she could pre-record the show at home. These days, as so many workplaces adjust to the long-term reality of COVID-19, she gets a cab to the studio once a week, recording in an empty room with her producer on the other side of the glass. She’s not really alone, of course, because out there somewhere are her listeners. Who are they? “I know I have a lot of actual artists listening,” she says. “But I think who I’m talking to is a mirror of me, someone who’s on a quest to find this music”.
Jamz’s work ethic goes bone-deep. She started earning money at 11, first with a paper round and then as an usher and in a health food shop. “My mum wouldn’t let us say ‘Can’t’,” she notes. But her industriousness is just as much a reflection of the entrepreneurial mindset that’s familiar to a generation of young people who’ve lived through two financial crashes and never known job security.
Her latest endeavour speaks to exactly these people: a podcast called DIY Handbook, launching this spring off the back of her DIY Generation series on 1Xtra, where she squeezes advice and motivational tidbits from actors, activists, software developers and other self- made success stories.
The podcast will offer deeper conversations on the “back end” of success — topics like dealing with rejection and how to say no. But does the name reflect a taste for self- reliance over collectivism? “You have to use the word DIY quite loosely,” she laughs, pre-empting the criticism. “I don’t think it’s possible to completely do it on your own, but the DIY ethos is about getting things started yourself. No one is an island.”
She’s noticed this mentality taking shape in certain pockets of music too, with DJ collectives like 6 Figure Gang and Boko Boko leading the way. “That’s how it should be done. It’s lonely to do it alone, and to have it all for yourself. I didn’t really have that when I was coming up, it was more dog-eat-dog.”
Her first clubbing experiences were local, starting with dancehall parties at Le Fez in New Cross — now a Sainsbury’s Local — before graduating to Rinse FM raves and UK funky nights at the O2, back when going out meant dressing up. “You’d get your bodycon out. Guys in sunglasses,” she laughs. “I had all the CDs you’d get outside the raves. You couldn’t find the songs, you didn’t even know who the artists were.”
Radio was the rhythm of her daily life: in the car to school she’d switch between Xfm (her mum and stepdad’s pick) and Choice, the station that took Black British music from pirate radio into the mainstream, and the blueprint for 1Xtra when it launched in 2002. “That was a time when DJs had records that nobody else had. When I was doing my college work I’d listen back to people like G Child and Ronnie Herel, obsessed with trying to find the records — then when they were finally out I’d be on LimeWire trying to get my hands on them.
The music industry has always been a gig economy, with little chance of a job-for-life, but increasingly it feels like every career in the business requires a level of juggling and risk-taking that would make a circus clown turn green. There’s a pressing requirement to sell yourself and become a brand. That means being visible all the time — not only showing off your work, but keeping followers “engaged” with selfies and steady streams of novel content. Jamz is blunt about the effects of social media. “I don’t think it’s good for my mental health. I think so much of what we do has to come from here — your source, your gut, who are you when you’re just being you, without being swayed. And you go on social media and it’s just carbon copies.”
The need to maintain a public image while also making art and paying the bills can feel like an impossible demand. When you invest so much of yourself into your work, it’s hard to cope if things don’t work out; this much is argued in a recent book, ‘Can Music Make You Sick? Measuring the Price of Musical Ambition’. The researchers behind it discovered that solo artists, songwriters and DJs are more anxious and depressed than other musicians, with a staggering 85% of DJs reporting high levels of anxiety.
Jamz nods in recognition. Her dad likes to remind her that she’s more than just her job, “but there is always a tiny voice that’s like, well, I’m not,” she says, laughing over Zoom when DJ Mag calls her a week later. “I’m like, am I really sad? Is this a sad life that I’m living? But this is the life that fulfils me, because everything that I do musically is my personality. I’ve chosen to make that personality a commodity.”
It’s an attitude that puts her at risk of exhaustion, and she knows it. “It's always been in the back of my head, not burning out. With the podcast, even though we’re talking about business and being creative, it always ends up with self-care — taking time for yourself, not being hard on yourself. Therapy’s come up quite a few times”.
I wanted to bring a lot in from that interview, as it is clear that there is much to love and know about Jamz Supernova. Broadcasting tremendous sound across the BBC, she is reaching a huge audience. I also like the fact that there seems to be no end to Jamz Supernova’s talents and energy! I wish her the best of luck at the ARIAS. She is keeping busy with podcasts, voiceovers and the Future Bounce label. You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter. I think we have a tremendous talent in Jamz Supernova. She is someone who will continue to push her talent and passion in exciting and fresh ways. Here we truly have…
A legend of the future.