Unapologetic Expression: The Inside Story of the UK Jazz Explosion

A lively, subversive history of the new UK jazz wave, encapsulating its revolutionary spirit and tracing its foundations to birth of the genre itself.

By the end of the last century, jazz music was considered by many to be obsolete and uncool, a genre appreciated only by out of touch white men with deeply questionable taste. And yet, by 2019, a new generation of UK jazz musicians was selling out major venues and appearing on festival line-ups around the world. How has UK jazz rehabilitated its image so totally in twenty-five years? And how did it ever become uncool in the first place?

Reaching back to the roots of jazz as the ‘unapologetic expression’ of oppressed peoples, shaped by the forces of slavery, imperialism and globalisation, Andre´ Marmot places this new wave within the wider context of a divided, postcolonial Britain navigating its identity in a new world order. These artists have crafted a sound which reflects the nation as it is today – a sound connected to the very origins of jazz itself.

Drawing on eighty-six interviews with key architects of this jazz renaissance and those who came before them – from Shabaka Hutchings, Nubya Garcia and Moses Boyd to Gilles Peterson, Courtney Pine and Cleveland Watkiss – Unapologetic Expression captures the radical spirit of a vital British musical movement.

''This is history almost in real time, with the con trails still visible in the sky . . . [Marmot] can really write. Not in a fancy way, but with a clarity of thought and a simple elegance of expression that make it a pleasure to turn from page to page . . . as full of life and energy, as sparky and challenging, as the music itself.''
RICHARD WILLIAMS, THE BLUE MOMENT