Ezra Collective arrive back on the global stage with a deeply African story to tell. Fresh off headlining the inaugural Montreux Jazz Festival South Africa, the Mercury Prize and BRIT Award-winning band have announced their fourth studio album Here Because of Hope, set for release on 18 September via Partisan Records, alongside the release of its first single Only Love featuring Pa Salieu.
Watch the stunning new video for Only Love below, creatively directed by Ebenza Blanche (Little Simz, Gucci) and shot on location in Lagos
The Lagos-shot video is no accident. Only Love is a song that wears its African roots openly, built around West African-inspired grooves, euphoric horns and Pa Salieu’s deeply personal lyricism. The track finds beauty in resilience, joy and survival. It is the sound of the African diaspora speaking back to the continent, and the continent will recognise itself in it.
For Ezra Collective, this connection runs deep. Led by Femi Koleoso, a British-Nigerian musician who has long drawn on his West African heritage as a creative foundation, the band have consistently been shaped by the same rhythms, spirituality and communal energy that pulse through African music. Their Johannesburg appearance at Montreux Jazz Festival South Africa earlier this year was not a tour stop. It was a homecoming of sorts, and one that clearly resonated.
The South African connection goes back further than performing in South Africa recently. Speaking ahead of the Montreux Jazz Festival South Africa appearance, Femi opened up about the artists who helped shape Ezra Collective long before they ever set foot on the continent: “When I was probably about 18 years old, I heard the song ‘African Marketplace’ by Abdullah Ibrahim. That song blew my mind. I remembered hearing it and thinking this is the best melody I’ve ever heard. And it really did something to my soul.” The influence runs through the band. Ezra Collective’s trumpet player Ife El Gunjobe traces his path to the instrument directly to Hugh Masekela: seeing him perform live is what made him want to play. And beyond the jazz lineage, Femi is candid about the more recent South African sound that has seeped into the band’s music. “It was honestly the Amapiano stuff that really hit our sound in a big way. The sounds of Black Coffee and what you guys were able to do with it. It was the sound of African music, but slightly electronic. But the melody still sounded so jazz and so soulful, and so singable.” For a band whose music has always been about tracing roots and building bridges, South Africa is not a market. It is part of the story.
Speaking on Only Love, Femi says: “Pa Salieu has been a musician that we have long admired in Ezra Collective. Not just because of his incredible lyricism and storytelling but also his ability to weave in his Gambian heritage and roots into such a distinctly UK sound. I spent some time studying West African music, studying Gambian music, and let that influence the bassline of this track and the drumbeat. We linked up with Pa in Wood Green and immediately his stories started to flow, he came with a bunch of lyrics from a really hard time he went through, but in those lyrics were so many stories of pain but also beauty, joy and love. We were trying to find that beautiful place in the middle of those two things, and that’s how we came about this song.”
Here Because of Hope follows another landmark year for the group, including winning Best Jazz Act at the MOBO Awards and receiving the Jazz FM Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Jazz. With excerpts read by BAFTA-winning actor Letitia Wright, the album features Pa Salieu, Lila Iké, Leona Lewis and Libianca.
Reflecting on the album, Ezra Collective say: “Our fourth offering feels like our first records were really Ezra Collective as children, this one really feels like Ezra Collective as adults. It’s impossible not to look at the world and feel deep pain and sadness, and we were really determined to write an album that still sees the prominent importance and final destination being joy, but also recognises the pain and the momentary difficulties that people are facing. This album is the journey from that pain to joy, and the connective word in the middle is hope.”
Over the past decade, Ezra Collective have performed at Wembley Arena, the Royal Albert Hall, Glastonbury, Central Park SummerStage and the Sydney Opera House, and have graced the covers of ES Magazine, Mixmag, Music Week and The Observer New Review, alongside features in Vogue, Billboard, Rolling Stone and NME.
With Here Because of Hope, and a story that runs directly through Lagos, Johannesburg and the heart of the African diaspora, Ezra Collective reaffirm that their music has always belonged as much to Africa as it does to Britain.
Here Because of Hope is out 18 September via Partisan Records. Pre-order HERE.
