Jamiroquai

Jamiroquai is a British funk and acid jazz group that includes overtones of disco and electronic sounds. It was formed in 1992 by its leader, singer Jason "Jay" Kay, along with Toby Smith (keyboards), Stuart Zender (bass), Nick Van Gelder (drums) and Wallis Buchanan (didgeridoo). Over time, the band has undergone numerous changes, so much so that with the exception of Jason Kay none of the original members remain in the group today.

Born in London, Jamiroquai was one of the main groups of reference on the international funk scene, at the head of the movement called acid jazz, which included bands such as Brand New Heavies, Incognito, Galliano and Corduroy. The first album recorded in 1992, Jamiroquai brought funk up to date in the 1990s. xx.

The name "Jamiroquai" It arises from the union of the name of the North American indigenous tribe of the Iroquois, with which Kay claims to mentally identify himself, and the term Jam, from the word jamming, musical improvisation. Among other things, the band has managed to sell more than forty million albums worldwide and has won numerous awards such as the Grammy, Brit award and MTV Video Music Award.

History

Beginnings: Emergency on Planet Earth and The Return of the Space Cowboy

Having been rejected in an audition as a singer for the band Brand New Heavies, Jay Kay decided to form his own band, now under the name Jamiroquai. Their first single, "When You Gonna Learn?", was recorded in 1989 and released in 1992 on Eddie Piller's Acid Jazz label.

Building on the success of this single, the band signed a contract with Sony BMG Music Entertainment to record eight albums for £1 million. Soon after they released their first album, Emergency on Planet Earth, recorded in 1993. The lyrics of social content combined with pop, funk, samba and acid jazz rhythms generated immediate success, reaching first place the UK sales charts for three weeks in a row. It included songs like the aforementioned "When You Gonna Learn?", "Emergency on Planet Earth", "Blow Your Mind" and "Too Young To Die". The latter was the first single to reach the top 10 best sellers in the UK.

Jamiroquai at the 1993 Glastonbury Festival.

After the success of the first album, in 1994 The Return of the Space Cowboy was released, with a more funk and acid jazz sound, abandoning instrumental music somewhat, and with lyrics of the same style of his previous album. It contains songs like "Space Cowboy", a controversial song that was censored in England for allegedly advocating cannabis use. Other songs included were "Stillness in Time" and "Half The Man", with a very simple video clip, "Scam", with social content, or "Just Another Story". The album was as successful as the previous one, but it did not reach first place in sales in the United Kingdom, staying in second.

The Golden Age: Traveling Without Moving and Synkronized

Jamiroquai in concert.

The arrival to the general public and worldwide fame is obtained with their third album Traveling Without Moving (1996), the band's best-selling album, and the best-selling funk album in history of music according to the Guinness World Records with twelve million copies worldwide. It is also the last album recorded with bassist Stuart Zender.

The album spawned two hits: "Virtual Insanity," the opening track, and "Cosmic Girl," one of the pinnacles of acid jazz. It also contains other songs such as Traveling Without Moving, or "Alright", which the band used in their presentation on the American comedy show Saturday Night Live. The album opened the doors of the North American market for them, which was confirmed in 1997, when the single "Virtual Insanity" won four awards at the MTV Video Music Awards, including Best Video of the Year and Best Cinematography. among the 100 best video clips in the history of MTV. Traveling Without Moving is perhaps the record that has given acid jazz the greatest diffusion.

That touch of acid jazz from the three albums released was less evident on 1999's Synchronized, with a certain orientation towards sounds similar to those offered by artists like Stevie Wonder. Enter Nick Fyffe on bass, which accentuates the funk side of the group. The band began to use electronic music, and their lyrics abandon, at least in part, the social theme, focusing Jay Kay on his youthful memories. This is evident in lyrics like "Black Capricorn Day" and "Soul Education."

Synkronized featured one of the band's best-known tracks, "Canned Heat", which was the fourth best-selling song in the UK, and was used in the films Center Stage (2000) and Napoleon Dynamite (2004). Other songs were "King for a day", with a different musical style than usual for the band, or "Falling" a pop melody with a touch of jazz. Another song from this album used in a movie soundtrack was "Deeper Underground", specifically in the 1998 version of Godzilla; the song went to number one on the British singles.

Funk Influence: A Funk Odyssey, Dynamite and Greatest Hits

Jamiroquai in Chicago.

Jay Kay's interest in funk and disco caused the band to change their early style somewhat. The influence of disco music on their fifth album A Funk Odyssey (2001) is already evident. The album generated the single "Little L" number one on the world charts, along with other songs that also achieved recognition such as "Love Foolosophy" or "You Give Me Something". The album opens with an electronic song, "Feels so Good". During this period, after more than 10 years, Toby Smith leaves the band to spend more time with his family and seek other musical experiences.

After this period of uninterrupted success, their sixth album, Dynamite, was released in June 2005. It reached number 34 on the British charts, obtaining moderate success worldwide. The album is characterized by its diversity of rhythms, from danceable songs like "(Don't) Give Hate A Chance", cuts with a more jazzy touch like "Talullah". Also on the disc, "Feels Just Like It Should" was featured on the soundtrack for the EA Sports video game "FIFA 06", a remix version was used on the soundtrack for another game, "Need For Speed: Most Wanted". The disc has two versions, one normal (CD) and another on DVD (DualDisc); the edition for Latin America, the United States and some European countries contained only eleven songs; those in the UK and Japan featured a twelfth song "(Time Won't Wait)". The Japanese edition includes up to a thirteenth song, a remix of "Feels So Good" from the A Funk Odyssey album.

Jay Kay at concert.

Jamiroquai released their first compilation album High Times: Singles 1992-2006 Greatest Hits, collecting the band's best songs since their staging in 1993 plus two new songs («Runaway» and « Radio"). The album includes remixes in addition to all the band's video clips and managed to sell more than one million copies worldwide, which added to their other albums by the band, totaled more than twenty-five million units worldwide up to that time. not counting the sale of DVDs and singles.

In March 2006, the band announced that they were leaving their Sony Music label and signing a new deal with Columbia Records, a subsidiary of Sony-BMG.

Jay Kay vs. Sony

Jay Kay expressed his annoyance with the record label Sony BMG Music Entertainment in 2006, in an interview in the Sydney Morning Herald. "Today 18% is music and 82% is bullshit advertising". He also stated that if he made a new album again he would sell it via the internet for five dollars, and that the compilation "High Times: Singles 1992-2006" had been put up for sale due to a contractual obligation with the record company; he had merely given his consent and his likeness to the release. There was speculation about the separation of Jay from Jamiroquai, denied by the singer himself: the band leader blamed the press for misinterpreting his words. Kay stated: “As always (journalists) took it the wrong way to get a cheap headline. All I said was that we're going to take some time to refit the studio and we'll be back to making music in a couple of months. There is no chance for me to quit the music business. Now that I have finished the contract with Sony/BMG, we have several options available to us; We'll just take time to see which one is right."

(2006-present) Rock Dust Light Star, world tour (2010-2014), and Automaton

Jay Kay announced in 2009 the signing of a new contract with Universal Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music. Rumors were growing about the new Jamiroquai album; Jason Kay stated in April 2010 that they had forty unreleased songs for the album. After numerous rumors, in July 2010 the name of the album Rock Dust Light Star was made public, which would be released on November 1, 2010, with the promotional single "White Knuckle Ride", released on November 31. August 2010 on the BBC Radio 1 show. The first official single from the album, "Blue Skies" was released on 1 November. The music videos for both songs premiered on the band's official YouTube channel on September 25, 2010.

On October 1, 2010, with the redesign of the band's official website, a new video of the band recording in the studio was shown. Several titles of their songs were revealed: "All Mixed Up In You", "I've Been Working" and "Super Highway", which are hitherto unreleased. A total of forty songs were recorded for the album, fifteen of which would be released on the market in different formats (CD, vinyl, Japanese version, deluxe edition). In general terms, the album is varied in genres but with a predominance of soul jazz, with songs like Blue Skies, Never Gonna Be Another, Two Completely Different Things or the song that gives the album its name.

The official promotion of the album began on October 7, 2010 in Mexico during a press conference where Jay Kay, Derrick McKenzie, Sola Akingbola, Matt Johnson, Paul Turner and Rob Harris made their appearance before the concerts in Brazil and Colombia. There was also the subject of a possible world tour in 2011 that ran from that year until mid-2014. A single called Smile was released in 2011 with a strong funk and jazz influence.

After 7 years of recording silence from the band, at the end of January 2017 the band announced the release of the album "Automaton", with the release of the self-titled single that has a marked influence of electro funk, which It reminded many fans of the first works of Daft Punk, they also announced after a long time the schedule of concerts that they will give in Europe and Asia during 2017. On February 10, they released on YouTube and all streaming music platforms, the second single from the album titled "Cloud 9", which recalls many of the band's hits in the 90s, with a marked accent in disco music and funk. The album was released on March 31, 2017, reaching number 1 on the Billboard's Dance/Electronic chart.

Toby Smith, founding member and former keyboardist of the band who was featured on the band's first five studio albums, passed away on April 11, 2017 at age 46.

In February 2018 they performed at the Viña del Mar Festival 2018, and in July 2018 at the Starlite Festival in Spain.

Discography

Since 1993 the band has released eight studio albums, one compilation, and four DVDs, as well as several singles and bootlegs. He has five platinum records and two gold, the most awarded being "Traveling Without Moving". Jamiroquai have sold more than thirty-one million studio albums worldwide and have five UK number ones and two number two spots. His singles earned five number 1s in the U.S. Dance and a number 1 on the UK Singles Chart.

Albums of study

• Emergency on Planet Earth (1993)
• The Return of the Space Cowboy (1994)
• Travelling without Moving (1996)
• Synkronized (1999)
• A Funk Odyssey (2001)
• Dynamite (2005)
• Rock Dust Light Star (2010)
• Automaton (2017)

Gang members

Current members

Jay Kay.

• Jay Kay – singer (1992–present)
• Derrick McKenzie – Battery (1994-present)
• Sola Akingbola – percussion, choirs (1994-present)
• Rob Harris – guitar (2000-present)
• Matt Johnson – keyboards (2002–present)
• Paul Turner – bass (2005–present)
• Hazel Fernandes – choirs (2001–present)
• Valerie Etienne – choirs (2001–present)
• Elle Cato – choirs (2017–present)
• Nate Williams – keyboards, guitar (2017–present)
• Howard Whiddett - Ableton (2017-present)

Previous members

• Toby Smith – keyboards (1992–2002; deceased in 2017)
• Wallis Buchanan – didgeridoo (1992–1999)
• Nick Tydman – bass (1992)
• Simon Bartholomew – Guitar (1992)
• Nick Van Gelder – Battery (1992–1993)
• Mike Smith – saxophone (1992-1993, 1994–1998)
• Stuart Zender – bass (1992-1998)
• Darren Galea a.k.a. DJ D-Zire – turntablism (1992–2001)
• Gavin Dodds – Guitar (1992–1994)
• Maurizio Ravalico - percussion (1992–1994)
• John Thirkell – trumpet, fliscorno (1992-1998)
• Gary Barnacle – saxophone, flute (1992-1996)
• Glenn Nightingale – Guitar (1993)
• Dennis Rollins – trombone (1994–1998)
• Simon Katz – guitar (1995–2000)
• Adrian Revell – saxophone, flute (1998–2000)
• Chris Fidler – trombone (1998)
• Winston Rollins – trombone (1998–2000)
• Martin Shaw – trumpet, fliscorno (1998–2000)
• Nick Fyffe – bass (1999-2003)
• Simon Carter – keyboards (1999–2002)
• Richard Murphy – bass (2005)
• James Russell – saxophone, flute (2010–2014)
• Jim Corry – saxophone (2010–2014)
• Malcolm Strachan – trumpet (2010–2014)
• Beverley Knight - Corista (2001)