Hey Music Mag - Issue 4 - February 2019

FEATURE JAMIROQUAI
Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield begat
Jamiroquai and Pharrell, and the influence
of Jamiroquai must have fed, consciously or
subconsciously, into the aural landscapes of
both Daft Punk and Pharrell.”
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Jay Kay was
remarkably sanguine about his band being
held up as musical torchbearers. “I mean
it’s very flattering,” he told journalist Chris
Weingarten. “It’s interesting, I watched the
Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars documentary.
It’s a fascinating documentary, but listening
to that you also remember that everybody
got their sh*t from somewhere else.
Snippets, bits, bobs.”
Fast-forward to this year and the band’s
glittering comeback shows no sign of
stopping. This month Jamiroquai will return
to the United Arab Emirates for the first time
since 2013 to headline the second night
of the Dubai Jazz Festival, on 21 February.
Then there are shows lined up in Spain,
Portugal, the Czech Republic, Germany and
Belgium throughout May.
So what can those in attendance expect?
Well, the word that keeps cropping up
in reviews of their live shows since their
triumphant return to the stage at London’s
Roundhouse in April 2017 is “bangers”. Jay
Kay’s boys (and girls – the new additions of
the band’s Cosmic Babes backing singers
bring some extra sass to proceedings) might
still retain the funk-jazz-soul groove that first
catapulted them to fame in the early ’90s,
but this has been allied to some belligerent,
club-infused electronics.
A review of that Roundhouse gig was quick
to point out the new electronic avenues
the band now travelled, describing two of
their monster ’90s hits, Virtual Insanity and
Canned Heat, as “actual f***ing bangers”.
Elsewhere, 2001’s Little L single was
described as a “disco thumper”, while
comeback release Automaton was noted for
its “robotic funk”.
The review concluded: “Trendy 25-yearolds
sung along to all the lyrics, suits a
couple of pints too deep clapped out of time
22 FEBRUARY 2019