Soweto Kinch: White JuJu Deconstructed

British saxophonist Soweto Kinch plays bebop. He raps. He is one of the wellsprings of the youth-driven London jazz scene, and for his second season as Resident Artistic Director, Kinch presents a combo version of his expansive work White Juju, exploring recent culture wars and racial upheavals.

After George Floyd was murdered, a statue of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson was taken down in Richmond, Va. In Bristol, England, a statue of the 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston was toppled and thrown into the harbor. Such acts were like “the removal of a weight, the lifting of a spell,” says Soweto Kinch. He has a name for the spell cast across the centuries by systemic racism: White JuJu. It’s the title of his new extended work, premiering this week at SFJAZZ. It charts a musical pathway through the recent culture wars and racial upheavals, blending electronic hip-hop, West Indian folk music, and jazz -- and forging a link to European classical music. Kinch weaves audio samples from recent news clips into the heat of White JuJu; its subject matter is sobering. But 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.”