On 'Dance, No One's Watching,' Ezra Collective Showcase The Joy Of Collective Movement
Ezra Collective are ecstatic. Upbeat and dance-focused, the UK-based quintet upends any preconceived notions one may have about what a jazz band should sound like.
Across three studio albums and two EPs, Ezra Collective incorporates a whirlwind of Afro-derived influences — from Afrobeat and Afropop, to funk, salsa, and gospel — into an infectious, and occasionally curious, explosion of euphoria.
"The momentum of the dance floor is something that I'm always trying to emulate," notes drummer Femi Koleoso. "Dancing plays a big part of our band, and we try to articulate that."
It's fitting, then, that the group's latest record is titled Dance, No One's Watching. Across 19 tracks, Ezra Collective's latest does nothing short of compel listeners to move their feet.
From the smooth stepping of single "God Gave Me Feet For Dancing" and the island-influenced waist whine of "Palm Wine," to the bombastic jubilation of "Ajala" (itself written following a moving gig at Fela Kuti's New Afrika Shrine in Lagos), Ezra's latest encourages you to experience "the true depth of what dancing can do for your soul in individual ways."
Similarly, the group's live show is anything but a staid performance. Whether at their sold-out residency at New York's famed Blue Note Jazz Club or onstage at Glastonbury Festival, Ezra Collective prove that jazz can be fit for any dance floor.
Out Sept. 27, Dance, No One's Watching was recorded at London's hallowed Abbey Road Studios in the days immediately following Notting Hill's Carnival. Something of an ode to the Beatles' rooftop concert performed just before recording Abbey Road, Ezra Collective filled the studio with family and friends.
"There were so many people in the room, it was like composing music about dancing and partying and being on stage. It would've been a disservice to the concept if we played it just in isolation in the studio," Koleoso says. "It made the recordings feel so much realer."
The setting was quite a 180 turn for the group, which also consists of Femi's brother, bassist TJ Koleoso, saxophonist James Mollison III, keyboardist Joe Armon-Jones and trumpeter Ife Ogunjobi. Their previous release, the Mercury Prize-winning Where I'm Meant To Be, was recorded in isolation during COVID-19 lockdown. And while the power of dance remains a throughline in all of their work, Dance, No One's Watching may be Ezra Collective's most celebratory release yet.
From a quiet, purple-walled room inside a youth club in the UK, Femi Koleoso spoke with GRAMMY.com about the power of dance and the importance of having your people close.
Ezra Collective have such a diversity of influence. Are there any new sounds on this record that you could speak to?
I fell in love with salsa music in the lockdown, got obsessed with videos of salsa bands and salsa music. And the first real way of looking at it from that lens was "Victory Dance" in the last record. I feel like "Shaking Body" [on this record] is a bit of a development from that place.
Similarly, "Streets is Calling" is an Afrobeat/Afropop, Afro-hip-hop sound that's kind of coming out of West Africa at the moment. We are all big Burna Boy and Wizkid lovers in the band, and we kind of let that sound seep out in this record ever so slightly more.
[Album closer] "Everybody" is coming from a Nigerian Baptist church song and we reimagined it...in the Pharoah Sanders "Love Is Everywhere" bag. We were in that kind of place.
I'm a big salsa fan myself, and I think all of those polyrhythms and improvisations work well in a jazz setting. Everything's also derived from Africa of course, so it also makes sense together.
The beauty of jazz is the freedom to connect all of these dots together. I am so influenced by Dizzy Gillespie — he loves Afro-Cuban music, but he also loves jazz and big band. Put it together, and that's kind of the attitude I have with every type of music I hear that I like.
Is there something to the naming conventions of your albums? You have You Can't Steal My Joy, Where I'm Meant To Be, and now Dance, No One’s Watching. Has Ezra Collective arrived at a new confidence where you could really sort of let loose?
A hundred percent. I think You Can't Steal My Joy was very much a narrative of us trying to define who we were and what we are: You can take this, but you can't take who I am. And then Where I'm Meant To Be was very much our documentation of the lockdown, and it felt like we were stripped to our bare bones; it was like, all I have right now is this and this is where I'm meant to be.
Dance, No One's Watching, it's like we're outside now. Remember the confidence everyone had when the lockdown was over, where these things we took for granted before you were storming into them like you owned the building?
I feel like this record is very much a documentation of where we are, and there is a confidence to the band. That confidence has come with so much more eloquence in being ourselves. And the more you are yourself and the more honest you are with that, the more confident you become.
Tell me about Ezra's origins as a band, and how that has influenced your perspective and presentation.
We met at a youth club [where] it was good people giving their time to young people, being positive, and that's how it was birthed. That shaped who we are today; our importance is always about who can we give this away to? Because it was all handed to us. It was all given to us by people.
As much as we are trying to play shows that are incredible and make ourselves proud, the deepest level of pride comes from who did you help on the journey? How many schools did you go into? How many youth clubs did you inspire? How many young people did you give the confidence that you were given?
In your Mercury Prize speech, you spoke on the importance of not just music education but encouraging musicians. Are Ezra Collective involved in any organizations specifically?
Quite literally, wherever we are, whoever's helping out young people play music, that's where we try and attach ourselves for that afternoon. In the summer that's just gone, I think three or four out of five [members] of the band ended up at the same youth club helping kids out. The building I'm in right now is a youth club. We had a day off in Boston, so I went to Berklee and spent some time with all the students, [and later at] New York University.
And in San Francisco, there's a drummer called Bella who's 15, who I teach drums when I'm in town. That's just what we are about, just because it's always been who we are. We came up in this way. As much as it's about what can you achieve, it's always about what can you give away. We're still involved; all of those places that I shouted out in the Mercury Prize, they're all places that I'd go to regularly to hang out with the students.
Ezra Collectie were the first jazz band to win the Mercury Prize. What do you think it is about your group that really broke through?
I think a lot of it was the timing. We were the first jazz band to win the Mercury Prize, but we weren't the first jazz band to deserve it. But we were standing on the shoulders of so many great musicians that came before us.
Our timing was perfect, I feel like. So many of the opportunities that maybe weren't there for jazz music beforehand, we are able to have, we were playing toe-to-toe with rock bands in big festivals, and social media meant that we weren't constrained to the powers of radio. Everyone could hear our music.
Also, I am proud to say this, but we give a hundred percent to everything. And I think whenever you do something with integrity and dedication, the reward comes. And I feel like that was one version of the reward.
We tried to be all hip-hop and cool about [winning that night], but we were just screaming and jumping on the floor. It was real.
Back to the record, can you tell me a little bit more about the recording process?
When you've got people actually dancing in the room, in the space, the music has a feeling and an authenticity that you can't fake.
We ended up inviting school teachers, kids from my youth group, a favorite football player, my favorite drummer, my mum and dad, all the band's mum and dads, all the band's siblings, everyone was all in this room, all at Abbey Road together. Bless them. We'd already recorded a version of the album in the studio which was perfect and precise, but when you had the screaming and just everything going on, that was real. And what you are hearing on that record is that experience. It's almost like the album is dancing.
Were you doing a lot of improvisation in studio, coming up with arrangements that followed the energy?
When you are playing in front of people, you start showing off. When you start showing off, things have to change. Even down to "Ajala," we found it quite difficult to play that song as a band because it was so spontaneously done. The structure and the arrangement was there, the song was written and made, but the way you approach it changes when you are in that moment. And for us, records are very much a documentation. It's a diary entry. You just want to be as true to that day as possible.
Are there any tracks on Dance, No One's Watching that really highlight this moment in time for you?
Like a good film, every time you watch it a different joke or a different scene becomes more poignant. "Palm Wine" is a really different type of Ezra Collective tune. It is not as aggressive as a lot of the music we've made before and it's got a lot of patience and confidence; it's almost like erring on the side of a sexier tune, which has not been what we've written previously. I love that.
I love the freedom and the free form of "Everybody" and "Have Patience." The piano and solo [on "Everybody"] was completely spontaneous; Joe took it away and grew into this really organic, beautiful place. "Ajala" is so deeply influenced by Lagos and Fela Kuti and the Shrine, and I'm proud of how it comes across with our own London, Ezra Collective spin on it.
Lots of moments of deep pride across the whole record. If you asked me a few months ago, I would've said "Hear My Cry," because when we were playing that live, I'd never seen rock and roll like it; people go mad for that tune.
I enjoyed that each track on Dance, No One's Watching flows into the next; it really does feel like a live session. Can you tell me a bit about that creative decision, if that was one that you made actively?
It was in line with the narrative of the dance floor. My favorite dances are the ones where I don't have to leave…the momentum of the dance floor is something that I'm always trying to emulate.
We're all dancers in our own individual ways; we have all experienced the true depth of what dancing can do for your soul in individual ways — whether it's going to dub raves with Joe and dancing like that, whether it's Carnival with Ife and dancing. Me and James Mollison have a deep love for early 2000s R&B, sucker for a bit of Missy Elliott and them things.
Dancing plays a big part of our band, and we try to articulate that. Every single member of the band is a writer on those tracks…. Everyone has equal reign to chip at a song.
I'd love to hear a little bit about the folks that you chose to bring into the fold and work with on this record.
It is the same situation every time: I just call up my friends. It's like when you are cooking and you make something like a stew or a curry; sometimes you taste it in the pot and you're like, Perfect. We are ready for dinner. And sometimes you taste it and you're like, Ah, it needs Olivia Dean.
When I'm not writing music, I'm trying to expand my friendship groups so that there are more people I can call upon. [For guests on "Streets Is Calling,"] Moonchild Sanelly did the Gorillaz tour of 2022; she became a close friend of mine. [Editor's note: Femi is the Gorillaz' live drummer.] M.anifest, I was in Mexico with him for Africa Express, and we were in the forest together with lots of free time. Yazmin Lacey, we met her when she did the Worldwide Awards in 2017. We were great friends, but then we made ["God Gave Me Feet For Dancing"] and was like, "This needs Yazmin."
I can hear when people don't know each other but made a song. "God Gave Me Feet For Dancing" is not possible without some sort of a history with someone. We sat in that studio and shared. We spoke about life, and then the song was birthed.
I saw one of your Blue Note residency shows in 2023, and I have to say, it was one of the best shows that I saw all year. Was that residency a big deal for you at all?
I was so excited by the challenge. People are very much there to sit down and be entertained, and we were there to let them know, "You are in the deep with us. I need to see you on your tables. I need to see handkerchiefs in the air." We've got such a burn it to the ground, give them everything mentality. By the end of it, we were so exhausted. But it was beautiful.
That was the tour when a lot of [Dance, No One's Watching] was being written. Then the demos of the album, the names were things like Chicago, Osaka, Amsterdam. They were the soundchecks we wrote those songs in. What a beautiful opportunity to play music inspired by the dance floor. And then you get back in your tour bus and you're just starting to write the next song.
Are there any other particularly big moments or high points in the past year or so that you can speak to?
We played the Royal Albert Hall, which was just so precious. That's a cathedral of music in the UK. And to have a chance to headline that is very special. We played at Glastonbury.
Maybe more deeply than all of those things: playing in Lagos, Nigeria, the city that inspires the sound of so much of our music, that was just beyond comprehension how special that felt. We played at the Shrine, Fela Kuti's house, basically.
Everybody is very much Nigerian-inspired. The whole album has the accent of that night out.
Where would you like to see Ezra Collective go next?
I would like to see the concept of this album lived in the physical as many times as possible. I just want to be on dance floors all over the world — in South America, in Africa, North America, Europe, Asia.
I just want to see these dance floors exist, and whilst seeing those dance floors exist, let them influence the next moment in the journey musically. We're already writing more music and making more music and enjoying that process of documenting it, but loving every second of it.