Yussef Dayes

Yussef Dayes emerged early in the rapid rise of South London’s jazz community as a drummer and composer whose distinctive, vividly expressive approach first reached wide audiences through United Vibrations, a group that merged Afrobeat textures with exploratory jazz and rock on their widely praised 2016 album The Myth of the Golden Ratio. Also in 2016, under the name Yussef Kamaal, he joined forces with Kamaal Williams for the jazz-funk project Black Focus. Three years later he issued the top-five album What Kinda Music, a collaboration with singer/songwriter Tom Misch released on Blue Note. The Yussef Dayes Trio followed in February 2021 with the live recording Welcome to the Hills. In September 2022 the Brownswood label presented The Yussef Dayes Experience: Live at Joshua Tree EP, and in September 2023 Dayes delivered his nineteen-track debut studio album Black Classical Music on Nonesuch.

Born in South East London, Dayes received his first drum kit at age four from his Jamaican father, who played bass. Country music and ’60s pop filled the home via his mother, while reggae and jazz records came from his father; these disparate strands shaped his rhythmic outlook. At ten he studied with fusion icon Billy Cobham, an encounter that confirmed his commitment to a professional path. Grime and hip-hop shared by school friends, together with the jungle productions of his older brother Ahmad, further informed his drumming.

Well before Dayes reached his teens, United Vibrations were performing in South London neighborhoods such as Peckham and Camberwell that would later define the jazz resurgence widely covered by the U.K. press. In 2009 the group issued the single “Ra!,” whose title paid tribute to their spiritual jazz idol Sun Ra; the track later appeared on their 2011 debut album Galaxies Not Ghettos. Their 2012 EP We Never Die contained further homages, including nods to John Coltrane and Gil Scott-Heron, and featured grime MC Conrad Kira on the opening cut.

In 2015 Dayes and pianist/keyboardist Kamaal Williams formed Yussef Kamaal and recorded funk-oriented sessions with Shabaka Hutchings that surfaced the following year as the Black Focus LP. The album earned silver certification and secured an invitation to South by Southwest in 2017, though Dayes was ultimately barred from entering the United States by a travel ban. The duo received the Best Breakthrough Act honor at the 2017 Jazz FM Awards. That same year Dayes contributed to Binker and Moses’ widely celebrated Journey to the Mountain of Forever. Following the dissolution of Yussef Kamaal, Dayes maintained a lower profile for a time yet issued several collaborative tracks with artists including Alfa Mist, Charlie Stacey, and Rocco Palladino.

Dayes first connected with singer/songwriter Tom Misch during a recording session for Loyle Carner’s single “Angel,” after which the pair remained in the studio to improvise; those recordings became the foundation of 2020’s What Kinda Music on Blue Note. The album reached the top five and marked Dayes’ initial charting release. In 2019 he appeared at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival with a trio featuring Palladino and Stacey; the performance was later issued as Welcome to the Hills in February 2021. September 2022 brought the release of The Yussef Dayes Experience: Live at Joshua Tree EP on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood imprint, where Dayes directed a quintet that included Palladino, saxophonist Malik Venna, keyboardist/synthesist Elijah Fox, and percussionist Alexander Bourt.

Around this time Dayes assembled a quartet with Venna, Palladino, keyboardist Charlie Stacey, and guitarist Miles James, augmenting the lineup in the studio with guests such as Tom Misch, Shabaka Hutchings, Sheila Maurice-Grey, Theon Cross, and strings from the Chineke! Orchestra. Recording took place across multiple London rooms under Dayes’ production, with co-production and engineering support from Malcolm Catto, Rachel Blum, James, Misch, and additional contributors. The resulting project, titled Black Classical Music, appeared on Nonesuch in September 2023.