five things to know about:
Soweto Kinch 

May 6, 2022 | by Richard Scheinin

Soweto Kinch

British saxophonist Soweto Kinch is a phenomenon. He plays bebop, he raps, and he is one of the wellsprings for the flourishing London jazz scene of recent years. The son of a playwright father and a stage-actor mother, he is an inquisitive soul — wide-open, finding inspiration in the spoken word, theater, and dance.

Here are five things for you to know about Kinch, a Resident Artistic Director at SFJAZZ who performs May 19-22:

1. Born in London and educated at Oxford, he grew up in the city of Birmingham’s Handsworth neighborhood, which has spawned such talents as Stevie Winwood and Steel Pulse. He describes the left-wing and Afro-centric circles in which he was raised: “Both of my parents, I think, would describe themselves as pan-African in their outlook. That really framed my approach and identity. I never let it go.”
2. He was turned on to jazz at age 13, when a family friend gave him a box of tapes, including John Coltrane’s Giant Steps and Sonny Rollins’ Saxophone Colossus. When he saw Wynton Marsalis perform at Birmingham Symphony Hall, he snuck backstage to meet the trumpeter, who encouraged him. That day, he says, “My direction was set in stone.” He was equally smitten with jazz and hip-hop, and Kinch’s concept to this day owes as much to Coltrane and Gary Bartz as it does to Public Enemy and A Tribe Called Quest.
3. His albums reflect his curious nature. A Life in the Day of B19: Tales of the Power Block, from 2006, weaves the stories of three inner-city Birmingham men through the saxophonist’s fusion of hip-hop and jazz. (B19 is the zip code of one of Birmingham’s most impoverished neighborhoods.) The Legend of Mike Smith, from 2013, was inspired by Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and tells the story of a rapper possessed by the seven deadly sins. Nonogram, from 2016, was inspired by a long period of research — “geeking out,” he jokes — into ancient mathematical systems.
4. For his residency at SFJAZZ, Kinch has assembled a super-group that includes trumpeter Nicholas Payton, pianist Eric Lewis, bassist Marcus Shelby, and drummer Greg Hutchinson. They will help him perform two of his recent projects.
5. Kinch’s San Francisco residency begins with The Black Peril (May 19-20), a musical commentary on the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918 and a second “virus” that broke out the year after — a wave of anti-Black race riots in England, Scotland, Italy, Jamaica, and the United States. He can’t help but see a connection to events of the past two years: the outbreak of the coronavirus and the wave of police killings of young Black men and women. When society faces a crisis, it lashes out, finds a scapegoat, he says, “and usually it’s Black people, Asian people, Jewish people, Muslim people.”
   
   White JuJu (May 21-22) is a danceable meditation on a sobering subject: system racism and the spell it casts. Once again, Kinch is building symbolic bridges: between European concert music and jazz, hip-hop, electronica, ragtime, and reggae. The music is “healing. It’s a tonic. It’s danceable,” he says. “We’re spending so much time on our phones and our screens, disconnected from our hips – and we really want to dance. It’s almost like `White JuJu’ is the thing that breaks up the dance, breaks up the groove, and keeps us from recognizing our common bonds.”

Soweto Kinch’s SFJAZZ residency begins with Black Peril on May 19 and 20, followed by White Peril on May 21 and 22. Tickets are available here. 

A staff writer at SFJAZZ, Richard Scheinin is a lifelong journalist. He was the San Jose Mercury News' classical music and jazz critic for more than a decade and has profiled scores of public figures, from Ike Turner to Tony La Russa and the Dalai Lama.