La Saboteuse, the new album from British-Bahraini musician Yazz Ahmed, maps out a captivating new direction for jazz. The trumpeter and flugelhorn-playing artist, like contemporaries Kamasi Washington, Sons of Kemet, Yussef Kamaal, or The Comet is Coming, comes at the genre from a fresh angle, and there’s a legion of new jazz fans out there in-tune with the sound.
Yazz’s second record (and first for Naim Records) is an ambitious and brilliant combination of her British jazz background and Arabic roots, realised in a way none have imagined before. “I love the sounds of Arabic music. The singing is humanistic,” she commented. “It’s very passionate. I’ve absorbed it, but only in the past few years has it come to the surface. I want to embrace my culture and my British jazz heritage.”