Ezra Collective star Ife Ogunjobi: 'I don't see many Black people in the London Symphony Orchestra'

Ife Ogunjobi was ten when he first picked up the trumpet. It was love at first note – but his neighbours were less impressed.

“I was a kid, and my mum took me to a performance of Hugh Masekela, a great South Africa trumpet player who has sadly since passed away,” he told the Big Issue.

“After that concert, I was like to my mom, ‘Yeah, I really want to play trumpet.’ I got one, I started practising at home. All the neighbours were just losing their minds through the wall.”

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Those early months of ear-splitting practise paid off. Ogunjobi is one fifth of the award-winning Ezra Collective, a London-based jazz quintet known for blending jazz with Afrobeat, hip-hop and reggae influences.

Their 2022 debut album Where I’m Meant to Be clinched the prestigious Mercury Prize last year – making them the first jazz act to win the award in its 31-year history. The band’s new album (Dance, No One’s Watching) was released on Friday (27 September). Ogunjobi is “very excited” – which is good news, because the band have a whirlwind few months of performances and press ahead.

Ife Ogunjobi’s rise as part of Ezra Collective has been meteoric; In November, they’re playing a mammoth gig at Wembley Arena. But Ogunjobi is proud of their humble origins – a London youth group.

The five musicians came together via Camden jazz programme Tomorrow’s Warriors, which works to foster diversity in the London jazz scene.

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“Youth spaces matter to all of us a lot,” said Ogunjobi. “The way I grew up, I was going to different youth centres, and Saturday music schools and whatnot to learn music, and that’s how I met some of my friends, that’s become the musician I’ve been able to, and how I’ve been able to thrive in this industry.”

Ogunjobi is also a solo artist and his debut EP Stay True is out now. “Without having those spaces [youth centres], I wouldn’t be where I am today,” he said.

“It’s so important for kids to be exposed to what they want to do at a young age. Be it fashion, dancing, music, accounting, IT. Their lives are so influenced by what they have access to at that age.”

The entire band have been vocal in their support of youth spaces. Drummer Femi Koleoso used his Mercury acceptance speech to pay tribute to “good, special people putting time and effort into [helping] young people to play music”.

But such all-important spaces are disappearing, as cash-strapped councils struggle to provide services on reduced budgets. 

A total of 1,243 council-run youth centres closed between 2010 to 2023, public service union UNISON estimate. Just 581 centres were still in operation at the end of March last year.

For some local authorities the closures ran into high double figures. They included Tower Hamlets Council, which closed 57 youth centres, while Gwynedd Council shut 49 and Birmingham City Council reduced its total by 42.

Meanwhile, more than three million children in the UK live in poverty. A lack of youth club provision shrinks their horizons even further.

Koleoso told NME “give us Paul McCartney money and we’ll build one [a youth club]”. Ogunjobi agrees, adding that individuals can help too.

“In this day and age where things have been cut and the funding isn’t there for these kinds of things, we as individuals need to just try and compensate for that as much as we can,” he said.

“If everyone does their bit, hopefully it can help compensate for the lack of funding to some of these establishments.”

For Ogunjobi, this means teaching music to kids who want to learn, or reserving access tickets at events. Paying it forward “it could be as simple” as sharing your record collection or advice.

“On the weekend, I performed at this show [London jazz festival Brassworks],” he says. “I got a message after the show from a kid who was really inspired by the show; he was asking me questions like, ‘How do you get to where you are?’ And all this stuff. Those small interactions can play a big part in someone’s development. Small things can go a long way.”

“Everyone is welcome” at the youth programme that fostered Ezra Collective, Ogunjobi says, but it particularly platforms diverse voices.

“That’s important,” the Ezra Collective star added. “Diversity in music is genre dependent. In jazz and rap there is a lot of diversity, but there isn’t that diversity across the board.

“I don’t know how many Black people I see in the London Symphony Orchestra, for example. It goes back to the youth. If I’m a young Black 12-year-old and I love the violin, and I dream of playing in the symphony orchestra, I’d not see anyone. If I don’t see anybody that looks like me there, I would find it tough to actually believe that it can happen.”

But he urges young musicians not to give up – nor to change themselves to try and fit in.

“My message is stay true to who you are as an individual. There is so much power in being yourself.”

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