Ezra Collective were faced with a challenge. The quintet needed to follow up from their achievement in winning the Mercury Prize in 2023 with Where I'm Meant To Be. That was a remarkable moment in itself, ending a 31-year drought during which a jazz album had been nominated for the prize more or less every year, but never won. Their task was to produce an album while being in demand and constantly touring all over the world. The result, the 19 tracks of Dance, No One’s Watching, infused with a positive spirit throughout, is very good.
The unifying principle is, in Femi Koleoso’s words, “a crazy feeling of making people dance,” which he describes as “ one of the things that became a rocket fuel of the band during that time… we were looking at the dance floors while making the album.”
That idea, channelling the emotion of joy in a deep way does seem to tapping into the zeitgeist. The recent announcement by the Southbank Centre’s creative team that the pretext of Emma Warren’s book “Dance Your Way Home” is going to be used to transform the Centre's public spaces into dancefloors for the summer next year shows the extent to which collective dance energy can be a unifying force for good.
So, at the core of Dance, No One’s Watching is a series of infectiously joyous dance grooves, each inspired by different models: Ghanaian highlife and even one of its predecessors palm wine music is there, and echoes of reggae, dub and grime, and many more. Drummer/leader Femi Koleoso, bassist TJ Koleoso and keyboard player Joe Armon-Jones are a formidable rhythmic unit. I particularly enjoyed the juxtaposition of the febrile “Ajala” and the deliciously poised and brief “The Traveller”. It is a remarkable sequence.
The album materials describe the band's process of collecting and swapping rhythmic and melodic ideas while on tour, and then adding other elements in sessions at Abbey Road. There is brief repose from a couple of brief string quartet episodes, variety from the vocal contributions: Nina Simone channeled by Yazmin Lacey in “God Gave Me Feet for Dancing”, a curious combination of hiphop wisdom and wacky childlike energy from Ghanaian rapper M.anifest and South African singer Moonchild Sanelly in “Streets is Calling”. The press materials point to an appearance by Arsenal legend Ian Wright..somewhere. I shall keep trying to find it while enjoying a life-giving album.
- Ezra Collective at OVO Wembley Arena on 15 November
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