The future of contemporary music beyond stylistic boundaries
For almost 60 years, the Orchestra Baobab from West Africa has stood for opening up the music of its homeland to pop from the USA and Europe. For Nubiyan Twist from Leeds, in turn, the sound of this legendary orchestra is one of the cornerstones of their own bridge-building between Afrobeat, hip-hop, funk, and soul. The NUEJAZZ double concert on October 26 in Nuremberg opens a window into the future of contemporary music beyond stylistic boundaries.
Orchestra Baobab
Senegal became independent in 1960. Like many other states in Africa, Senegal had to start from scratch politically, socially, and economically after the withdrawal of the former colonial power, France, and build new structures in order to function and survive as a state. Politically, in particular, the first years were turbulent for the people of Senegal, characterized by the ambivalent attitude of their first Senegalese president, Léopold Sédar Senghor.
On the one hand, Senghor and his “Union Progressiste Sénégalaise” party effectively ruled alone from 1965 onwards. On the other hand, he pursued an almost visionary cultural policy, giving the Senegalese people unrestricted access to music festivals, recording studios, art galleries, and museums.
During these years, Senegal’s capital Dakar, was home to the Miami, a music club where bands performed and people could dance to their sound. As was customary at the time, this club also had its house band.
In 1970, the Miami was renamed Baobab, and the house band found its name: Orchestra Baobab. Even back then, the orchestra was as heterogeneous as its sound was hybrid, with musicians from Senegal, Togo, and other countries in West and Central Africa playing jazz, Latin, Afro-Cuban, and regional music.
The music of the Orchestra Baobab certainly inspired and fascinated its audience. And the longer the orchestra played together, the more it opened up to (Afro)American pop music. It disbanded in 1987, only to celebrate a comeback in 2001 at the instigation of Youssou N’Dour. Since then, Orchestra Baobab has been demonstrating worldwide that its unique blend of styles, for which it has always been renowned, has lost none of its freshness, liveliness, and originality.
Orchestra Baobab | North Sea Jazz 2023
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Orchestra Baobab | Pape Ndiaye
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Nubiyan Twist
The band Nubiyan Twist formed at Leeds College of Music in 2011. Even back then, nine fellow students from this music college in the northern English city wanted to make music that would ignore stylistic boundaries from the outset and sweep away any aesthetic restrictions. Even today, the nine musicians still want to be open to any genre; their music should stimulate you intellectually and emotionally in equal measure. And even back then, 13 years ago, the result was an urban sound clash of cultures, a breakneck mix of Afrobeat, funk, soul, hip-hop, and dancefloor that turned jazz on its head again.
This Afro-British collective has released three albums which, on the one hand, show what great musicians are gathered under the name Nubiyan Twist and who know how to master any task that comes their way with bravura. On the other hand, Nubiyan Twist is all about celebrating exuberant, pushing grooves, brass themes that flow into sweet melodies, laid-back harmonies and strong vocals. Little has changed on the fourth album, “Find Your Flame”. “Like all our albums, this one is a snapshot of our influences and journeys during production,” says Nubiyan Twist guitarist and bandleader Tom Excell.
“Most importantly, the process we went through together has helped to rekindle the fire of resistance to life’s adversities in each of us.”
Nubiyan Twist | So Mi Stay
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Nubiyan Twist | Figure Numatic (live)
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NUE JAZZ
In 2013, Nuremberg jazz musicians guitarist Frank Wuppinger and bassist Marco Kühnl envisioned organizing an international jazz festival for their hometown. What started eleven years ago as a local event has since evolved into a success story known as the NUEJAZZ Festival. For the two festival organizers, jazz is not merely a defined style; it is a fluid form of music created in the moment, transcending language, cultural, and social barriers. This approach aims to provide both performers and the audience with a unique and shared concert experience. Their efforts have been validated: this year, the NUEJAZZ Festival was awarded the German Jazz Prize as “Festival of the Year.”
Wuppinger and Kühnl are now so open in their programming that it is easy for them to curate aesthetically diverse bands and projects for each of their festival editions. The jazz of their imagination reaches out to the Afrobeat and Rumba Congolaise of Central and West Africa, integrates pop and rock music from the USA or Europe as a matter of course, and is happy to enter into connections with the club culture of the dancefloor, for example. Once again this year, from October 19 to 30, established jazz greats such as pianist Brad Mehldau and guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel will meet iconoclastic innovators such as London rapper and keyboardist Alfa Mist and American trumpeter Theo Croker.
A highlight of this year’s edition of NUEJAZZ promises to be the double concert on October 26, when the Pan-West African Orchestra Baobab shares the stage with Nubiyan Twist from Leeds, England.
