Featured Release

Album Overview

Here Because of Hope is organized as a 17-track journey in three movements, tracing musical connections from Africa through the Caribbean and back to London. Short spoken sections read by Letitia Wright divide the sequence, while the quintet works through Afrobeat, highlife, dub, reggae, soul and contemporary London dance rhythms without separating those influences from its core jazz instrumentation. Femi Koleoso’s drums and TJ Koleoso’s bass provide much of the record’s forward motion, with Joe Armon-Jones on keys and the horn voices of James Mollison and Ife Ogunjobi shaping melodies, responses and improvisational space.

The album’s structure also gives its guest appearances a specific place within that route. Pa Salieu, Lila Iké, Leona Lewis and Libianca enter at different points, while the instrumental pieces keep returning attention to the five-piece band and the relationship among groove, ensemble writing and improvisation.

From the album…

“Jubilee Feeling” arrives late in the album, during the movement that brings the record’s geographical path back toward London. The track is instrumental, with drums and percussion establishing the momentum before horn figures and phased electric piano enter the arrangement. Its rhythmic reference point reaches toward the funky-house sound associated with London club culture, placing that language alongside Ezra Collective’s established horn-and-rhythm-section vocabulary. As an entry point into Here Because of Hope, it shows how the album connects jazz ensemble playing with music made for collective movement rather than treating those worlds as separate traditions.

Recommended listening: start with “Jubilee Feeling” for the London end of the album’s three-part journey, then move back to “Sweet Echo” and “Only Love” for its West African-facing material, followed by “Well Organised” for the Caribbean portion of the sequence.

Album Details

Artist: Ezra Collective
Album: Here Because of Hope
Label: Partisan Records

Personnel

Femi Koleoso — drums
TJ Koleoso — bass
Joe Armon-Jones — keys
James Mollison — saxophone
Ife Ogunjobi — trumpet

Featured guests / spoken-word contributors

Letitia Wright — spoken readings
Pa Salieu — “Only Love”
Lila Iké — “Well Organised”
Leona Lewis — “All I Need”
Libianca — “Most High”

Track Listing

1. Part 1 (read by Letitia Wright)
2. Blow Your Trumpet
3. Sweet Echo
4. Don’t Worry
5. Only Love (feat. Pa Salieu)
6. Someday
7. Part 2 (read by Letitia Wright)
8. Birdie Sings
9. The Last Stand
10. Well Organised (feat. Lila Iké)
11. El Corazon
12. Bunny on the Rise
13. Part 3 (read by Letitia Wright)
14. All I Need (feat. Leona Lewis)
15. Jubilee Feeling
16. Black Flag
17. Most High (feat. Libianca)