Wildfields Norwich: A Perfect Day of Jazz, Soul, and Hip Hop

How much people are prepared to pay for a questionable large-scale gig or festival experience is a hot topic at the moment. I’m not going to enter the Oasis debate other than to say that if it brings the free market horror of dynamic pricing to an end, then the brothers Gallagher will have inadvertently done us all a great service.

Wildfields in Norwich (14 and 15 August 2024) was the antithesis of these events. A brilliantly curated bill for the Friday, comfortable off-site accommodation and a small performance area buzzing on a rare English sunny day.

My daughter and I have been trying to keep going to gigs as she’s progressed into her early 20s and moved away for university. We’d missed out on Glastonbury tickets for a few years and wanted to do an outdoor gig a little off the beaten track.

Wildfields looked perfect. It hit the sweet spot of jazz, soul, and hip-hop, which covers much of my listening these days and some of hers. The Ezra Collective was the big draw for both of us – for me, a chance to catch them before they headlined arenas at the end of the year and for my daughter, the opportunity of potential guest slots from the likes of Loyle Carner, Jorja Smith and others (more on that later).

What really swung it, though, was the supporting cast. I wasn’t aware of Jalen Ngonda but his three-piece lineup of classic soul was immediate. He’s signed to the Daptone label from the East Coast of the US but is now living in Liverpool. He’s part of a roster that seeks to build on the legacy of the fallen Sharon Jones and Charles Barkley. The music harks back to the late sixties golden age of soul, with strong Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield vibes. It isn’t pushing any boundaries but boy, is it enjoyable.

Yazmin Lacey offers a more contemporary soul experience. I’ve been playing her debut album, Voice Notes, over the last year. It speaks of her experiences, and whilst it is slightly more melancholy than Ngonda, it has a subtle underlying edge. As she puts it:

Voice Notes is about the yearnings and learnings of a 34-year-old Black woman who’s living in London, just trying to live and enjoy life amongst some fuckery and my immediate responses to that,

Nubya Garcia is about to release her second full-length album, Odyssey, four years after her Mercury Prize-nominated debut Source. The sax player is well established now as being at the front of this decade’s renaissance in British jazz. One only has to look at the band that she recorded her first EP on the formative Jazz ReFreshed label, to understand the spread of talent that this scene has now generated – Sheila Maurice-Grey (Kokoroko), Moses Boyd (Binker and Moses), Joe Armon Jones and Femi Koloeso (Ezra Collective), Theon Cross (Sons of Kemet). The cross-pollination is insane.

Nubya illustrates perfectly what makes the current wave distinct from established jazz composed elsewhere in the world. It starts with the Windrush generation, taking those Caribbean influences and integrating them with the street sounds of the UK (grime and drill). The likes of the Gondwana label add some European influences. I’d written about the new scene here and this is playlist is also a good entry point.

Here’s a clip from her 2022 Glastonbury performance which I was lucky enough to see and have a chat with her afterwards. She’d borrowed the trenchcoat from a mate and was paranoid about getting it back intact. This title track from that first album straddles the lines between jazz, reggae and dub. It’s a great jumping-off point for anyone interested in her music. It features the Ezra Collective’s Joe Armon-Jones on keyboards to illustrate my earlier point about the collective sensibilities of these musicians.

Sampa the Great was bridging the gap between Nubya and the headlining Ezra Collective. Born in Zambia, she moved to Botswana as an infant to avoid unrest, she completed a degree in audio engineering in Sydney. She’s visited her birth country regularly and hers is another music that draws from a rich geographic and cultural well. I’d been listening to both of her albums (The Return and As Above, So Below) in the run-up to Wildfields and really enjoying them.

The live experience is a little more in your face than the album. Sampa appeared dressed in red, with four dancers in matching hue. There was no live band, with them performing energetically to a backing track with live vocals. This is didn’t detract in the slightest and gave the crowd a real lift after the long hot day. Her music is an excellent counterpoint to what we’d heard during the day, being Afrocentric. I’d love to see her perform with a full band as the LP’s are so musically rich but the 45 minutes we got left us definitely wanting more (and it turned out we didn’t need to wait long).

This is one of my favourite tracks from her latest record,

Finally, we come to the headliners, perhaps the ultimate collaborators within this new wave – the Ezra Collective.

The first jazz band to receive a Mercury Music award, moving beyond the prizes’s tokenistic approach to the genre. Their music is joyous but very direct and accessible. It won’t scare the horses, and this isn’t intended to be a slight. They channel the approach elements of their collective heritage and create something melodically and rhythmically recognisable. This is probably why they’re the first UK jazz band to break into the large arena shows they’ve lined up for the autumn.

We had secretly hoped for some of the features artists on their recent albums to join them. Loyle Carner and Jorja Smith may have been a stretch but both Yazmin Lacey and Sampa the Great were on the supporting bill. We got the latter for Life Goes on but unfortunately Lacey didn’t appear for the infectious new single, God Gave Me Feet For Dancing.

The sheer joy of the band and their music and the spirit of unity this creates could do with being bottled and sold. Reflecting back on the Farage riots and the Right’s frequent statements that multiculturalism doesn’t work, the Collective’s performance is the disarming antithesis of this narrow world view. Inclusive without being preachy or patronising, the atmosphere is pure fun.

Engagement with the crowd is deft and full of stories, the most surprising being band leader Femi Koleoso’s connection to Norwich via his charity work.

This clip is the perfect embodiment of the festival, the band entering the crowd via a path cleared by Koleoso. The tune is Victory Dance, appropriately performed on the evening they won the Mercury Prize. It harks pack to a Nigerian heritage, an echo of the directness of Fela Kuti.

A short note about the Festival. Whilst the size was small, the inevitable queues for drinks, food and the loo were non-existent (at least if you timed the food run right). The compact nature of the site meant you could be within a few feet of the action without needing to arrive at the stage half an hour before. The venue was in the beautiful Earlham Park, with accommodation in the adjacent University of East Anglia, ten minutes stroll away.

The festival have created this video which captures the vibe of the day.

It really was one of those perfect days when the weather, the company and the music all aligned. We may well be going back next year.