FEATURE: Spotlight: Camilla George — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Camilla George

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I have not spent much time…

spotlighting band leaders, Jazz musicians and saxophonists. Happily, when it comes to the remarkable Camilla George, all three are covered! One of the most inventive and inspiring musicians you will ever hear, I wanted to spend some time delving into her music and career. Mixing together West African grooves with the distinct and multifarious sounds of the London Jazz scene, Camilla George is a musician everyone should tune into. I want to bring in a few features/interviews with her, so that we can learn more about this world-class talent. First, from her website, here is some background and biography:

“Camilla George is a visionary saxophonist, composer, bandleader and innovator. Her strong cultural roots and love of fusing African and Western Music has informed her own unique style, a key reason why she is a firm fixture on the new London Jazz scene, alongside peers such as Nubya Garcia and Shabaka Hutchings.

Her music is a hypnotising blend of Afrofuturism, hip hop and jazz, with a politically minded subtext that has a powerful connection to her Nigerian identity, lineage and heritage, reflecting African history, culture and slavery.

Her forthcoming third studio album, ‘Ibio Ibio’, is a tribute to her tribe the Ibibio people of South Eastern Coastal Nigeria. The album features an incredible lineup, including Daniel Casimir, Sarah Tandy, Winton Clifford, Renato Paris, Sheila Maurice-Grey, Rosie Turton, Shirley Tetteh, hip hop drummer, Daru Jones, Birmingham based rapper, Lady Sanity and Sam Jones.

Born in Eket, Nigeria, Camilla has been interested in music from an early age and particularly in the fusion of African and Western music. She grew up listening to Fela Kuti, as well as Jackie McLean and Charlie Parker. She began playing the saxophone aged 11 years old, when she won a music contest where the prize awarded her saxophone lessons.

Camilla went on to study with many jazz greats such as saxophone giant, Jean Toussaint (of Art Blakey fame), Julian Siegal and Martin Speake at Trinity College of Music where she gained a Masters in Jazz Performance, as well as being awarded The Archer Scholarship for Outstanding Performance in 2011.

In 2009, she joined award-winning band Jazz Jamaica and performed with special guest, Ernest Ranglin at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club. In 2013 Jazz Jamaica was nominated for a MOBO award for Jazz Performance. They continue to perform extensively all over the world.

In 2014, Camilla formed her own critically acclaimed project showcasing the stars of the new UK Jazz Scene. Dubbed “The Golden Girl of Jazz” by The Evening Standard, Camilla’s debut album, ‘Isang’ (pronounced E-SANG which means ‘journey’ in Ibibio her native language) received huge critical acclaim.

Her follow up album, ‘The People Could Fly’ which was released in September 2018, featuring special guest Omar, as well as in hugely respected guitarist Shirley Tetteh, gained substantial critical acclaim with 4 star reviews from the Financial Times and Jazzwise to name a few. The album and Camilla was featured on several key playlists such as State of Jazz, and Camilla was the poster girl for Tidal’s British Jazz playlist. The album looked at tales that slaves passed onto their children through generations and, whilst full of sorrow, was essentially a story of hope for black people and mankind that we can one day live together in harmony.

Camilla’s band has gigged solidly, being fortunate to support Courtney Pine’s album launch featuring Omar at The Barbican, as well as performing at Love Supreme (where Camilla took part in a panel discussion with Kamasi Washington) and the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. Camilla’s band also supported Dee Dee Bridgewater at The Cadogan Hall for the 2017 London Jazz festival. Dee Dee was so impressed she remarked, “The world is safe because we have Camilla!”

As part of the EFG London Jazz festival Camilla performed at the Purcell room, which was described by Jazz Journal as “A truly memorable concert…Jazz superstars in the making” with the London Jazz Review speaking of “the mature and imaginative compositions combined with some sublime saxophone solos”.

Also as part of the EFG London Jazz festival, Camilla performed at King’s Place to a very appreciative audience, a show that was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

Camilla has been nominated for an Urban Music Award for Best Jazz artist in 2017 and 2018 and nominated for a Jazz FM award for Best Instrumentalist 2019. She has performed in the Jazz Re:freshed showcase for SXSW, which was filmed at Abbey Road studios in 2021, as well as the Jazzahead showcase in 2021 and reached the final in the DC Jazz Prix in 2021.

Most recently, she was awarded the PRS Foundation Momentum Award which funded the completion of her third studio album, ‘Ibio Ibio’, to be released in September 2022 on Ever Records/!K7 Music”.

Before coming to some more recent press, I want to highlight an interview form Reverb. They spoke with the Jazz sensation in 2021. It seems like music – and particularly Jazz – was part of Camilla George’s household from a very young age. Her family background and growing up is fascinating and rich with vivid sounds, scents and scenes:

“Every Saturday when Camilla George was growing up, she’d sit with her dad and listen to his record collection. "That was jazz time," she says. "He’d be like, ‘This is Cannonball, I went to see him, this is what he played and we’re going to listen to it now. This is Sonny Stitt, I prefer him on alto,’ – I don’t have a preference, I think he’s sick on both, but my dad preferred him on alto. We listened to Jackie McLean, it was such an education."

After her father passed away, George inherited his vinyl collection, which she keeps in pride of place in his original leather record case in her London apartment. Born in Nigeria, George moved to London as an infant and was obsessed with the saxophone from a young age, waiting impatiently for the chance to get her hands on one.

She’s a protégé of the Tomorrow’s Warriors jazz education programme run by Gary Crosby, completed her Masters at Trinity College of Music, has performed with Jazz Jamaica, Courtney Pine’s Venus Warriors, and toured with Pee Wee Ellis. As part of the BBC’s Jazz 625 television special, she shared the stage with Joshua Redman and Jean Toussaint.

"It was fantastic to be involved in that," she says, "because that was really like going back to the old days of how you learn, older players taking you under their wing, giving you advice. Joshua Redman gave me his email address after that, and we corresponded. I just thought, ‘My gosh, this is Joshua Redman!’ So cool."

What’s the inspiration behind Ibio-Ibio?

It’s basically an homage to where I was born and our tribe, the Ibibio people. It explores things, like our creation myth, that are important to the culture of the Ibibio people. I’ve loved doing the research for it, I’ve learned even more about my roots.

They have the gods Abassi and his wife Atai, it’s quite similar to the Bible in that they created a pair of humans in their own image. Those are stories that I was told when I was young.

How is this filtering into your music?

There are some things that are parallel, not similar, to The People Could Fly, with Afrobeat grooves—I’ve been looking into High Life beats. There’s this particular Gahu High Life beat, that’s Ghanaian, it’s got that vibe. There’s one tune that’s quite straight-ahead jazz, I’ve got some stuff that’s more on the hip-hop side.

I have been very lucky to be working with a Birmingham-based rapper called Lady Sanity. We toured together with Pee Wee Ellis, and then we did another thing with Carleen Anderson, and I think she’s amazing. She’s featured on two of the pieces. It’s going to be produced by a drummer who I also met on the Pee Wee Ellis tour, called Daru Jones, who’s done more of the hip-hop stuff.

There’s definitely a hip-hop element, an Afrobeat element, and a jazz vibe, so it’s a mish-mash of styles. But I believe in it, I think it’s going to be an exciting album.

You mentioned you’re a lifelong hip-hop fan, is this melding of styles part of what defines the new London jazz scene right now?

I do think there is a part of that which is true. When you talk about London jazz, our scene was created partly by the Warriors. Most of us came up through the Warriors. The Warriors were so appealing for people who come from different backgrounds. When they talk about the London scene having all of this stuff, it’s because of that—because we were in an environment where it was okay to show our African heritage or our Caribbean heritage, or wherever we happened to come from in the world.

That organisation fostered that and I think that’s why there is this melting pot of different influences in the London jazz scene because it’s all the different people that have come through this loving environment, the family that is Tomorrow’s Warriors. Those people on that scene, Nubya [Garcia], Femi [Koleoso], Shabaka [Hutchings], every single one of them came through the Warriors in some shape or form”.

It is quite a tough time for musicians everywhere. I think, as maybe the Jazz scene is smaller than a lot of other genres, the reality is different for musicians here. In November, The Guardian spoke with six Jazz musicians about making a living out of their passion. They chatted with Camilla George about her experiences as a Jazz artist living in London:

“In many ways, Camilla George exemplifies the diverse musical identity of the London jazz scene. She learned to play the saxophone as an 11-year-old, thanks to subsidised lessons at school, and went on to train in the grassroots jazz workshop Tomorrow’s Warriors, before playing in tutor Gary Crosby’s Jazz Jamaica group and creating improvised music inspired by her Nigerian heritage.

“Tomorrow’s Warriors created a safe space for kids from different backgrounds to learn together for free,” George says. “It brought together an unexpected mix of people, which has resulted in music that draws proudly on our own cultures. Not many people felt comfortable doing that before.”

Contemporaries on the London scene, such as Garcia and drummer Moses Boyd, have also been trained by Tomorrow’s Warriors and George can see the impact today. “When I was at music school at Trinity Laban, I was the only Black person and the only woman on my course,” she says. “Now, when I go to pick the strongest players for my band, often there are more women than men, and that’s testament to the fact that my contemporaries are showing kids that they can pick up an instrument and the Warriors are training them.”

Having just released her third album, the Afrobeat-inflected Ibio-Ibio, and with a forthcoming headline show during the London jazz festival, George’s star as a bandleader is beginning to ascend. “It feels as if there’s a real demand for this music now,” she says. “I was mobbed on my first gig back from Covid at Ronnie Scott’s, people were so excited. I’m really enjoying it, but I’m also finding it hard. We’ve had these two years where we got used to a different pace of life, so it is a bit of a culture shock to be back.”

With her calendar packed, George is looking forward to Christmas and the prospect of writing new material. “I’m going to retreat to my childhood bedroom,” she says. “All I’ll have is my keyboard and time to come up with something!”.

I am going to end with a recent interview from Jazzwise. Ibio-Ibio came out last September, but it is an album that should be played widely now. I worry that a lot of sensational Jazz is restricted to specialist radio stations and broader-minded ones like BBC Radio 6 Music. Such an incredible and long-lasting sound, Camilla George’s music warrants as wide an audience as is possible:

“Her 2022 return, Ibio-Ibio, continues her interest in strong narratives, in an album that celebrates her people, the Ibibio, who hail from the Awka Ibom state of coastal Nigeria (George was born in the town of Eket, before her father, between jobs as a tailor, was deported by the authorities, forcing the family to return to the UK).

But the biggest change, as George sees it, is more practical: discovering the joy (and increasingly, the pain) of international touring. After spending years on the UK circuit, her next goal was to break into Europe. She went even further: her first gig outside the UK was at Blue Note Beijing. “It’s like Pokémon, I wanted to get that one,” she says about the Tokyo branch of the Blue Note franchise, a dream gig vanquished by the pandemic.

As a return to an adjusted normal continues, George is articulate about the issues facing her peer group of working musicians. For starters, she has plans to perform in France in the near future, but hasn’t yet been able get her A1 forms returned from HMRC. With payment conditional on the forms being filled out, and a 20% tax slapped on those earnings, it makes the prospect of a handful of French gigs in the autumn – two dates at Paris’ Le Duc des Lombards in September – more fraught than fun. “There are certain artists I was touring Europe with who aren’t able to call me now, because it’s too much paperwork, and it’s too expensive to have me on the gig,” she adds. “That’s a real shame, because, if you lose a gig for playing reasons? Okay, fair enough, you accept that. But to lose it because of Brexit is quite annoying.”

She sees the problems past her own loss of income, though. George, who describes the UK “notoriously hard” for touring musicians, confirms it’s an even less appealing prospect post-Brexit. “Prominent musicians who were touring just won’t do a London gig. Or if they do, it’s just one, because there’s no money in it. And that’s such a shame, that we’re not getting to see the level of musicianship that [mainland] Europe sees.” Touring Europe brings George into contact with some of her favourite musicians – China Moses, Theo Croker, and even her idol Kenny Garrett – but there are repercussions back home for those not regularly travelling to the continent. “It’s creating a division in terms of access, and being able to hear that standard of playing.”

There’s an irony to such divides in a jazz world which currently seems particularly closely knit, thanks to the increasing presence of social media in the music making process. It’s a leveller for sure, bringing never-before imagined collaborations across continents, but its use is certainly skewed towards the younger generation. And, even as the youth-focused discourse around jazz in the UK slowly loses its energy – every description of the ‘UK jazz scene’ seems wrapped in obligatory scare quotes – George reveals the tensions that still exist between generations and groups.

What’s creating those tensions? George words her response carefully.

“I think when you scratch the surface, actually, it’s a racial thing. I think the people that are doing it don’t realise it. But all the musicians they’re ragging on are generally black. Usually, they’re black and female. Often, the criticisms they’re laying are because they don’t rate the Afrobeat thing that people are doing. But it’s very sad, because the music originated from Africa; it came from enslaved black Americans who were actually Africans. I don’t think [Afrobeat is] as far away from jazz as they think it is.”

Ibio-Ibio is a pleasant-sounding album that sees George bend more into a Roy Hargrove-esque soundworld than her previously bop-adjacent releases. Yet the subject matter behind the sounds is far from Hargrove’s mellifluous earfood. George draws heavily from traumatic stories – the more uncomfortable parts of her community’s history (many of which involve their complex relationship with the slave trade) punctuate the album, with the appearance of Birmingham rapper Sanity providing lyrical focus, just in case you forget track titles like ‘Journey Across The Sea’ or ‘The Long Juju Slave Route of Arochokwu’. How does George find so much hope through traumatic subjects?

“It’s an interesting one, because with my previous album, I remember one person saying ‘oh, it’s too happy’. But the point of the album is that you have to find hope in adversity, because if you don’t, you can’t learn anything, and we don’t grow”.

I have spent a lot of time with Pop artists and TikTok stars the past couple of months. I have not really broadened and looked at artists in other scenes and parts of the music globe. I am glad to have spent time investigating the magnificent music of Camilla George. She is one of the leader lights and players in the London Jazz scene. Go and check out her music and follow George on social media. Someone who has evolved as a composer and musician through the years, this is an exciting time for Camilla George. Do yourself a favour and lose yourself…