Jazz stars Ezra Collective are runners-up

If you think Ezra Collective’s music is life-affirming, just wait until you meet them in person.

Tumbling into the BBC’s Maida Vale studios, the band are boisterous and charming, the sort of people to greet a perfect stranger like a long-lost cousin.

Bandleader and drummer Femi Koleoso has a room-filling smile and a zest for life that infuses his music.

“We’re just trying to bring something positive and joyful to whoever will listen,” he says. “So anything that exposes us to more people is always gratefully received.”

Today, that means the honour of being named runner-up in the BBC’s Sound Of 2025.

The annual poll, which has been running since 2003, has tipped everyone from 50 Cent and Adele, to Raye and Dua Lipa for success.

Ezra Collective’s addition to the list comes relatively late in their career. They’ve already won the Mercury Prize, for their second album Where I’m Meant To Be, and last November, they became the first jazz act to sell out Wembley Arena.

But to their minds, the band are still newcomers.

Koleoso recalls the thrumming intensity of making his Wembley debut.

“Fifteen minutes before the gig, I made the horrific mistake of reading the wall backstage,” he says.

“They’d put up the names of everyone who’d played there before us. So it was like, ‘OK, Beyoncé played here, and Jay-Z and Stormzy and Madonna… And now it’s Ezra Collective’s turn’.”

If they were intimidated, it didn’t show. The quintet turn audience participation into an artform, venturing out into the crowd and making fans part of their ensemble, almost like a New Orleans parade.

Reviews were ecstatic, calling the show a “masterclass in musicianship” that left “every single person with a smile on their face.”

As a result, Ezra Collective’s name will be added to the Wembley Wall – but Koleoso wants it to have a radically different effect.

“Wouldn’t it be great if, in 10 years’ time, some band is getting intimidated by Beyoncé and Madonna, and then they see our name, and they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, they came into our school to do an assembly – so we’ll be fine’?”.

Community and musical kinship is Ezra Collective’s foundation stone; one that can be traced back to the youth club Tomorrow’s Warriors, where they first met in central London in 2012.

The charity offers training to musicians who can’t afford private tuition, with a special focus on “those with a background from the African Diaspora and girls, who are often under-represented in the music industry”.

“It’s where I met my best friends,” says Koleoso, who remains a passionate supporter of youth clubs.

“Not to get too deep, but how do you fix domestic violence or the male suicide rate? You teach a 14-year-old boy how to deal with rejection, how to love people, how to control anger, how to respect others.

“Youth clubs can help with that. By the time someone’s 24, it’s almost too late.”

When Koleoso first visited Tomorrow’s Warriors with his brother TJ, they’d already formed a tight rhythm section in their church band. In fact, Femi had been playing drums since he was four.

“Maybe I’m slightly biased, but I think the drums are the best instrument, because you can see what’s going on,” he says.

“When I watch our horn section, I’m hearing thousands of notes, but I’m only seeing three valves. It doesn’t quite make sense. But with the drums, you hit them and they make a sound.

“I wish everything was as simple as that.”

Tomorrow’s Warriors introduced Koleoso to jazz, a genre he’d previously considered elite and inaccessible, and to his future bandmates James Mollison (sax), Ife Ogunjobi (keyboards) and Dylan Jones (trumpet).

Together, they ripped the genre rulebook to shreds, magpie-ing elements of Afrobeat, hip-hop, grime, reggae, Latin, R&B, highlife and jazz to create a sound that bulges with possibility.

“We’re the shuffle generation,” explains Koleoso. “We listen to Beethoven and 50 Cent comes on straight after. That influences the way we approach music: We love jazz but at the same time I love salsa too, so why not try and get that in there?”

After playing their first gig in a Foyles bookshop, they released their debut EP, Chapter 7, in 2016, and a debut album, You Can’t Steal My Joy in 2019.

Then Covid hit.

“We were meant to do a world tour but shortly after we arrived in New Zealand, we were told get back to London because the world was collapsing,” says Koleoso.

Lockdown inspired their second album, but instead of introspection and gloom, it’s an immensely energetic record, fuelled by the promise of post-pandemic reconnection.

“What we found was we had each other,” says Koleoso. “It felt like we were meant to be together, and we made as many tracks as we could that articulate that.”

When it won the Mercury Prize, the follow-up was already in the bag.

Dance, No-One’s Watching was recorded over three days (“one was just setting up”) at Abbey Road Studios, with the band still slightly worse-for-wear after a weekend at the Notting Hill Carnival.

The idea was to capture the excitement of their live show direct to tape – with an audience of family and friends to stop them obsessing over the technicalities of recording.

“What you’re hearing is very, very real. We just played it and then had a listen back, and were like, ‘Yeah, put it on a vinyl’.”

That’s why the album features a short, aborted performance of Ajala, with Koleoso instructing his bandmates to play harder on the next take.

“A lot of people think that’s a skit, but it was a very real moment,” he says. “I wanted the song to go off, but it didn’t, so we stopped and tried again.

“Those things are precious, because they will never happen again.

“There’s a lot of things in the world that don’t feel real enough, but music shouldn’t be one of them.”

In contrast to its predecessor, the album is immersed in the real world. Themed around a night out in London, it celebrates the sacred power of dancing and losing yourself in music with other people.

There’s even a song titled N29, after the night bus Koleso used to catch home from nights out in London.

Anyone who’s braved one of those 3am rides home will recognise the song’s mixture of post-club euphoria, random conversations and the backdrop of potential violence.

Koleoso says his first experience of that liminal reality came after his high school prom.

“Our school got one of those fancy little boats on the Thames and everyone paid their £20, which, for a state school in Enfield, was an impressive night out,” he recalls.

“This was at the height of grime and funky house, so I’m just having the best time in my life, dancing on this boat in a suit… then I missed the last tube home.”

In a time before Google Maps, it took a while to locate the right bus. When he finally clambered on board, it was carnage.

“I grew 10 years in that one journey, do you know what I mean?” he laughs. “I saw waaaay to much life!”

His desire to document life in all its messy, wonderful glory is the album’s core.

“In 2022, we got to travel the whole world. We had amazing nights in New Orleans, on colourful streets with so much going on that it’s hard to describe.

“And you’d think, ‘How do I get this feeling into a song? I want someone in their flat in Edmonton to get a glimpse of this.’

“Or you’d go to the shrine in Lagos and be like, ‘I need to convey the feeling of the shrine to someone who lives in Cardiff.'”

Ezra Collective’s ever-growing audience suggests they’ve successfully completed that mission.

But there’s one person who’ll be surprised: Koleoso’s A-level music teacher.

“Here’s the secret, I got a D in music,” he confesses.

“I was pretty embarrassed, because it made difficult to convince my parents that playing music was gonna be OK.

“But what it tells you is that exams can determine one type of intelligence, but they’re not the be-all and end-all.

“If there was an exam in shutting down shows, I think I’d do better than a D.”

Amen to that.