José James

He is said to be a jazz musician for the hip-hop generation. There is a lot of truth in that, but not all of it. He blurs the lines between traditional and modern jazz, hip hop, soul, funk, pop and rock so perfectly that his style can be called the history of black music in a nutshell.

In addition to the talent given to José James to the Irish-Panamanian wine, he is also a musically educated creator, a graduate of The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, based in more than half a century of musicianship in New York's Greenwich Village neighborhood. Even though he made his independent debut in 2008, the album Dreamer already caught the attention of listeners and critics, and it is no wonder that his gradual journey led to the two publishing harbors that all jazzmen in the world prayed for, first to the Impulse label and then to Blue Note, for which he recorded five albums before he founded his own Rainbow Blonde label with his wife, the singer Taali.

José James is truly an artist with the greatest range of genres. Like few people, he can combine brisk hip-hop rhythms and jazz harmonies into a completely natural whole live. His approach is also evidenced by the musical legacy of his predecessors, or predecessors, whom he considers extremely inspiring and likes to deal with their music. In 2015, he released the album Yesterday I Had the Blues: The Music of Billie Holiday, on which he performed songs from the repertoire of one of the greatest jazz singers of the twentieth century, Billie Holiday. And his most recent album, last year's On & On, is a tribute to composer and singer Erykah Badu. “For my generation, Erykah Badu was one of the most innovative and incisive songwriters. Her work proved to be ground-breaking in a social, musical and artistic sense," says José James.

After all, he also collaborated with a wide range of musicians in the past, whether it was a pianist who is no longer alive or a classical of modern jazz McCoy Tyner, or contemporary progressives Flying Lotus, Robert Glasper or Erik Truffaz.