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Jazz Warriors

Afropeans

Destine-E Records 777 25 3 2005

Given that one of the most disappointing aspects of the much-vaunted UK jazz renaissance at the end of the 1980s was the somewhat mysterious demise of the original Jazz Warriors, disbanded after only one album (Out of Many One People, Island, 1987), the rebirth marked by Afropeans is doubly welcome.

Apparently, prime mover Courtney Pine, to quote the accompanying press release, 'always intended up and coming players to have a place in the band; when interference from some members meant this was questioned, the band broke up under somewhat acrimonious circumstances'.

Fittingly, therefore, the current Warriors' fifteen members are drawn from fast-rising (relative) newcomers (among them cellist/vocalist Ayanna Witter Johnson and Empirical frontmen Jay Phelps and Nathaniel Facey) as well as long-established players on the London/UK scene (Pine himself, pianist Alex Wilson, hornmen Byron Wallen and Jason Yarde etc.), and they gel well on this rumbustious live album, recorded at the Barbican concert in October 2007 marking the bicentenary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.

With exhilarating electric violinist Omar Puente on board as well as Witter Johnson, plus steel pan player Samuel Dubois and electric/acoustic guitarist Femi Temowo, textural variety is never wholly sacrificed in the interests of celebratory rambunctiousness; nevertheless, the overwhelming impression made by the album is one of spontaneously joyous energy springing uncontrivedly from the capital's musical culture, incorporating as it does everything from reggae and hip-hop to steel-band music, jazz and funk.

A studio album exploiting the classy polish of Empirical, the extraordinary virtuosity of Puente and Wilson (whose solo contribution here is simply breathtaking), all under the charismatic leadership of Pine, would be a mouth-watering prospect; this irresistibly vibrant album, meanwhile, is a great appetiser.