JAZZ AT THE SPRING FEST

Camilla George was born in the city of Eket, Nigeria and has been interested in music since early childhood. In particular, she listened to saxophonists Jackie McLean and Charlie Parker and the music of the politically engaged Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, considered the king of Afrobeat, a Nigerian genre combining West African tradition with American funk and jazz. She began playing the saxophone at the age of 11, when she won a music competition in which she received lessons on the instrument as a prize.  She went on to study with a number of jazz greats and completed the jazz programme at London’s Trinity College of Music. While still a student, she became a member of the acclaimed band Jazz Jamaica. When she released her debut album Isang in 2017, the title of which means “journey” in her native Ibibio language, it was well received by critics and music lovers alike. The Evening Standard hailed the young musician as “the golden girl of jazz.”.

On her latest album Ibio-Ibio, a tribute to the people of her native tribe on the South Nigerian coast, she returned to her African roots and her native language with even greater intensity. The album builds on a hypnotic blend of classical jazz with Afrofuturism and hip-hop. “The bebop scene of Forties and Fifties New York was buzzing with musicians from loads of different styles,” the musician told the Evening Standard. “Proper jazz artists like Miles Davis were incorporating new techniques and sounds, always evolving and changing. Which is what is happening now. In London, LA, New York, everywhere, jazz is being mixed with things like grime, hip-hop and electronica, and it is not any less jazz,” said Camilla – who shares a flat with a black cat named Coltrane – placing her comment in the context of her own work.