The American poet and musician’s new album The Great Bailout tracks the money given to British slaveowners – including David Cameron’s ancestors. She explains why she is pessimistic about getting true justice

‘The aftermath of enslavement just doesn’t wash away with bleach. It doesn’t wash away with new buildings. It doesn’t wash away with so-called diversity and representation.” The voice of poet and musician Camae Ayewa, known as Moor Mother, commands your whole attention even over a video call. Within minutes of connecting with her, it’s clear that when she speaks, she does so not to impress or to serenade, but to tell the truth. “In the last [interview] I did in the Guardian I said we have yet to deal with the repercussions of enslavement. Everyone got mad at me for saying it. How have we?”

That interview was back in 2017 . Since then, the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests brought the discourse around systemic racism and colonialism to the forefront of public attention and so today, Ayewa’s ruminations – about our slowness to reckon with the effects of the slave trade – wouldn’t be deemed as “fringe” as they once were. However, her suspicions remain as strong today as they were seven years ago. “I don’t think [much] has changed. It’s still the same thing. Just dressed in different, more modern clothing,” she says. “Technology is advancing and more information is coming out, but we have [yet] to do the due diligence to put pressure on our governments and make a stand.”

(Spiritmuse)
The Chicago drummer’s collective add strings to their loose, laid-back groove, making for a subtly powerful listen

Over the past 50 years, Chicago drummer Kahil El’Zabar has been at the forefront of the avant garde in jazz. He has collaborated with the trumpeters Don Cherry and Dizzy Gillespie and provided percussion for stars such as Stevie Wonder, but it is with his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble that El’Zabar has found himself most free. Across their 15 albums he has tapped into west African polyrhythms, meditative ambience and soaring spirituality, producing a signature swing that is loose and laid-back without allowing the groove to fall apart. The band are usually accompanied by trumpet and baritone saxophone, and their latest record sees the addition of a string section, creating 12 tracks of typically soulful, freeform jazz.

Playing through a mix of standards and originals, the album opens with an ingeniously languorous version of Miles Davis’s All Blues, emphasising the song’s infectious melody through Alex Harding’s yearning baritone solo. El’Zabar’s own compositions, meanwhile, showcase the versatility of his playing style, encompassing the rumbling cajón of violin feature Hang Tuff as well as the shaker-driven groove of Ornette and Kari’s cymbal blasts. Although it may be too languid for some, Open Me demonstrates the quiet power of El’Zabar’s experience, creating movement through minimal expression.

The South India-raised, New York-born artist, who has collaborated with Sault and more, melds spiritual jazz, burbling electronica and a soaring voice

Of the many “wow” moments during Sault’s debut live show in London last December, one soloist floored everyone. Early in the evening, a woman in an ethereal white dress, alone under the spotlights, unleashed elegant, deeply moving vocal acrobatics that drew on south Asian classical traditions. She was performing a version of Monsoon’s 1982 UK hit Ever So Lonely , with improvised lyrics such as: “If I stand/ In the lessons of my mothers/ Let me sing.” (The audience did, with full attention.)

Many wondered who this beguiling presence was, whose voice had a delicate emotive heft that could turn stoics into sobbing wrecks. It was Ganavya Doraiswamy, a New York-born, California-based, South India-raised scholar and multi-instrumentalist. She has already worked on an album produced by Quincy Jones and collaborated with jazz luminaries including Esperanza Spalding but has only recently returned as an album artist herself. Doraiswamy was taught carnatic music by her mother and grandmothers, and learned storytelling techniques during a youth spent on southern India’s pilgrimage trail . She relocated back to the US, took up the first of many arts degrees and released her first album in 2018: Aikyam: Onnu , which translated jazz standards into her native Tamil.

Like the Sky I’ve Been Too Quiet will be released via Native Rebel Recordings on 15 March ; Ganavya is at St Pancras Old Church, London, 1 3-15 March

We may not be able to guarantee the sunshine, but British summer time always means great live music. Grab your spangly cowboy hat – these are the best fests to visit this year

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14 to 16 June , Leicestershire
The headliners at the 21st staging of metal’s marquee event – Queens of the Stone Age, Fall Out Boy and Avenged Sevenfold – are glitzy and blokey, but not particularly heavy. Thankfully it’s a different story elsewhere, including Friday’s eardrum-rattling prospect of hardcore must-sees Scowl, Speed, Ithaca and Zulu in quick succession. Huw Baines

He’s at the height of his powers as a saxophonist – but has given it up to play a Japanese flute that takes years to master. In London and Brazil, the multiple Mercury nominee explains why he has to resist the easy path, even if it puts his livelihood at risk

It is December 2023, and Shabaka Hutchings has just played a gig at Saint John at Hackney church, London, performing John Coltrane’s 1964 album A Love Supreme . It was rapturously received, despite – or perhaps because of – Hutchings’ unorthodox approach to playing this revered text, the very cornerstone of spiritual jazz . There was no collective rehearsal – instead, Hutchings wrote “a really deep, long email” to his bandmates, ruminating on the meaning of the term spiritual jazz. “People say ‘spiritual jazz, spiritual jazz’, but no one goes: what is spirit?” he frowns. “To me, it’s simple – in the English language, to be spirited is to have a force that brings you up, that animates you out of inertia. The opposite of spirit is, I guess, depression, when you think: I can’t move forward.”

And then he goes into a lengthy but fascinating digression, which variously touches on non-western spiritual practices, the “orientation of energy”, how watching “trashy TV” can affect your vitality, and how making yourself uncomfortable on stage reflects the discomfort “we all have to navigate because of society”.

Graham McGregor-Smith trained as an accountant, but never forgot his teenage dream of making music. Now, the singer-songwriter’s debut record is about to land

Graham McGregor-Smith couldn’t be happier. At 61, he has finally fulfilled his lifelong dream – recording an album. The cover of Road to Anywhere features a photograph of Highway 50 in the US state of Nevada taken by McGregor-Smith when he cycled from San Francisco to New York for charity in 2017. He did everything else himself, too, from writing and performing the songs to the recording and artwork, albeit with some help along the way. In March, he will play at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in London to celebrate the release; he has a second gig in June.

McGregor-Smith, who is from Worcestershire, grew up listening to bands such as Ramones, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Simple Minds but looks back further than that for his own music. The album mixes 40s and 50s swing with some 60s bossa nova and 70s US country rock thrown in for good measure. “When I take the dog for a walk, I’m always humming swing tunes to myself, so it had to be swing,” he says.

(Psychic Hotline)
The Brazilian jazz experimentalist draws on the atmosphere of the rainforest and its mythical beings to create his most explosive, explorative LP yet

Brazilian pianist Amaro Freitas approaches the 88 keys of his piano as if they were drums. Across three albums since his 2016 debut Sangue Negro, Freitas has honed a style of muscular, complex rhythm within jazz improvisation. Often playing different metres in each hand, he encompasses everything from folk maracatu polyrhythms on 2018’s Afrocatu to staccato, mechanical repetitions on 2021’s Sankofa.

His latest album, Y’Y, puts this rhythmic playfulness in service to a spiritual theme. Dedicated to the preservation of the Amazon, the nine tracks of Y’Y (meaning “water” or “river” in Sateré Mawé dialect) use whistles, prepared piano and percussion to evoke the sounds of the rainforest and its mythical beings. Opener Mapinguari (Encantado da Mata) sees Freitas playing twinkling phrases over shakers and cymbal washes, reflecting the rustling of leaves; dedicated to the “water mother” spirit, Uiara (Encantada da Água) – Vida e Cura develops a cascading rhythm over dampened piano strings to create the effect of water rushing.

(Intakt)
The New York-based sax player and co mix it up, from funk shuffle to full-on swing, on their blistering fourth album

American tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis has one of the fiercest sounds in modern jazz. Hard-blowing and full of declarative melodies, he has released more than 10 records as a bandleader since his 2010 debut, Moments, c hannelling everything from meandering blues on 2014’s Divine Travels to ecstatic gospel on 2023’s For Mahalia, With Love and distorted punk improvisations with post-rock outfit the Messthetics on the same year’s Eye of I . Lewis’s quartet is typically an outlet for his more nimble compositions, producing harmonically complex backings for his heavy horn phrases. Their fourth album, Transfiguration , is no different, comprising eight tracks of angular yet explosive experimentation.

The opening title track sets the tone, interweaving Lewis’s expressive lines among pianist Aruán Ortiz ’s polyrhythms before reaching a blistering sax solo. As the album progresses, there is variety amid the consistency of Lewis’s blasting tone: a funk shuffle on Swerve, Latin rhythm on Per 6, and fast-paced swing on Black Apollo. The compositions can often feel on the verge of breaking apart, producing the uneasy rubato of Trinity of Creative Self or the entropy of Empirical Perception. Yet for each moment where the listener struggles to hang on, there is a counterpoint of musical release: Lewis’s lively sax leads without fear on tracks such as Élan Vital, cementing his place as one of his generation’s foremost instrumentalists.

(Night Dreamer)
Recorded in single-take live performances, the Chicago multi-instrumentalist deftly throws funk, gospel, soul and his own fine voice into the mix

Isaiah Collier is keen on “the ancestors”. Opening this, his fourth album, the young Chicagoan pays fulsome vocal tribute to bygone jazz giants and soul stars, while his previous record, 2021’s Cosmic Transitions , was a handsome homage to John Coltrane’s masterpiece A Love Supreme . It consolidated Collier’s reputation as a shamanic saxophone prodigy (he’s also an adept multi-instrumentalist with a fine voice), and showed that his admiration for the spiritual jazz of Coltrane, Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders is about inspiration rather than imitation.

Parallel Universe is a different creature, the latest direct-to-disc recording from the Night Dreamer label , meaning it’s a live-in-studio performance without overdubs. Musically, it’s more diverse, folding funk and gospel flavours into a mix animated by vocal parts (from Jimetta Rose and Collier), and catchy riffs as much as knockdown sax, though there is ample post-bop wailing, especially on the title cut. The 13 minutes of Village Song return to the ancestral wellspring, moving from Yoruba chants to a sprightly melody led by Collier’s flute, while The Lean and Open the Door draw on 70s soul flavours with Rhodes piano and wah-wah guitar. Peace, love and liberty are much evoked, but in a dynamic way.