When it comes to explaining their own genius, musicians love to talk nonsense. Some claim they don’t listen to music at all because it would disrupt the creative process, their artistic uniqueness, their individuality. Ideally, however, unique music is created under exactly the opposite conditions: The most diverse influences meet, overlap, mix, and change in such a way that something new emerges in the end. This is how musical evolution works. And it is responsible for the fact that we understand »music« differently today than our Pleistocene ancestors who drummed on tree trunks with wooden sticks. Emma-Jean Thackray is a prime example of this absorption, processing, and reworking of musical sources.
In 2021, the English jazz musician, producer, bandleader, and DJ released Yellow, a post-genre debut album that was universally acclaimed. Above all because it seems to have effortlessly brought a strange order to a stylistic thicket. Spiritual jazz, funk jazz, soul, gospel, hip-hop, electronic textures from house and broken beat come together on Yellow .
This can be explained by the artist’s biography, which makes no distinction between her music and her life. In an interview she once said:“I believe that music and other aspects of my life merge seamlessly. The world around me influences my art, and my art changes the way I live my life.” And this is what her own biography stands for.
All in one hut, going crazy
Emma-Jean Thackray was born in Leeds in 1989 and grew up in a rural area near the city. Brass bands have a long tradition there. She learned to play the cornet as a child and became a member of a local brass band. At the age of 14, she taught herself to play the trumpet and piano. In the following years she learned guitar, bass and how to use synthesizers and samplers. As a teenager, she stumbled upon “Concierto de Aranjuez” while downloading brass band music. The key piece from the Miles Davis album Sketches Of Spain, arranged by Gil Evans, blew her away. From then on, she began to collect jazz records like crazy. After that, she soaked up all kinds of music she could get her hands on: John and Alice Coltrane, Fela Kuti, Roy Ayers, Brian Wilson, J Dilla, Madlib, Detroit techno, Chicago house. Her studies at the Royal Welsh College Of Music & Drama in Cardiff with the late composer and pianist Keith Tippett also broadened her musical horizons.
In a world where everything has to be explained as simply and understandably as possible, Emma-Jean Thackray’s versatility and taste in music make her an outsider. She is aware of this. But she doesn’t wear this supposedly negative trait like a mark of Cain on her forehead, but rather interprets it positively for herself: if you don’t belong to a certain music scene, you don’t have to follow its rules. And the artist makes good use of this. All of her influences manifest themselves in the music on Yellow, the album by which all of her future albums will be measured.
Now the follow-up is released with Weird“. Fittingly, the album is being released onBrownswood Recordings, the label of DJ and radio host Gilles Peterson, who, like Thackray, is known for his eclectic taste in music. Commenting on the new album, Emma-Jean Thackray said: »It sounds like Kurt Cobain, Steely Dan and Radiohead rented a cabin in the woods, went a little crazy and listened to a lot of Herbie Hancock, Hole, Steve Lacy and Kate Bush and then made a record.«
