Kokoroko

Kokoroko took shape in London as an eight-piece ensemble under the direction of trumpeter and composer Sheila Maurice-Grey, fusing contemporary jazz-funk, Afrobeat, spiritual soul, and West African highlife. The young musicians brought a high-energy, polyrhythmic presence to the city’s stages, where soulful horns traded phrases with dense percussion, thick guitars, resonant basses, angular keyboards, and layered vocals. In 2018 Gilles Peterson closed his influential London-scene compilation We Out Here with their track “Abusey Junction,” which quickly circulated online. Their growing profile rested on a series of explosive, uplifting concerts. The same piece reappeared on the band’s self-titled four-track debut EP, released to strong acclaim the next year on Brownswood. Two further singles, “Carry Me Home” and “Baba Ayoola,” followed in 2020. Their first full-length album, Could We Be More, arrived in August 2022 on the same label, with Could We Be More Remixes issued the following year.

Sheila Maurice-Grey established the group in 2014 after participating in a music workshop in Kenya. She recruited fellow London jazz students, among them saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi of Nerija and SEED Ensemble, trombonist Richie Seivwright, bassist Mutale Chashi, guitarist Oscar Jerome, percussionist Onome Edgeworth, keyboardist Yohan Kebede, and drummer Ayo Salawu. After a year of writing and performing in small venues, the octet moved onto the festival circuit. Their contribution “Abusey Junction” to the award-winning Brownswood anthology We Out Here, a February 2018 survey of London jazz, funk, and global grooves, stood out immediately and earned Track of the Year honors at the 2019 Worldwide Awards before appearing on the March EP. That summer they played extensively across England and Europe, during which guitarist Tobi Adenaike-Johnson and bassist Duane Atherley replaced Chashi and Jerome. The 2020 Brownswood single “Carry Me Home / Baba Ayoola” received international radio play and favorable reviews, while the band collected “best group” prizes at both the Urban Music Awards 2020 and the Parliamentary Jazz Awards 2021. In the United States they were named to NPR’s Austin 100 list despite having issued only seven tracks.

Kokoroko opened 2022 with the single “Something’s Going On,” an anthemic blend of highlife and soul-jazz conceived as a spiritual counterpart to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” “We Give Thanks” followed in March and “Age of Ascent” in June; all three selections appeared on the fifteen-track album Could We Be More that August. While touring the U.K. at the time of release, the group shared a headline bill at the We Out Here Festival with Azymuth, Pharoah Sanders, and the Comet Is Coming before performing in France and the Netherlands. Could We Be More Remixes appeared in 2023, containing reinterpretations by KeiyaA, Ash Lauryn, Stefan Ringer, and dreamcastmoe.