Ezra Collective, winners of the 2023 Mercury Music Prize Award, return today with their first single of the year, 'Ajala'.
Out now on Partisan Records, the new single kick-starts the return of the band, with a highly anticipated new album on the horizon. They have also announced their upcoming tour; Continuing to make historic feats, they will become the first UK Jazz act to headline London’s OVO Arena Wembley on November 15.
On the cover of the latest ES Magazine, the quintet, lauded for bringing Jazz to the mainstream, burst back on to the scene with ‘Ajala’. Interpolating the sounds of Afrobeats and Highlife with Jazz, the single nods to the nomadic spirit of the infamous Olabisi Ajala, the Ghanaian-Nigerian world adventurer who ambitiously took on touring the world on his scooter, covering 87 countries.
Listen to ‘Ajala’ by Ezra Collective on our Arsenal Fan Playlist on Spotify.
On ‘Ajala’, Femi Koleoso says: “Ajala the Traveller is a journalist from Nigeria whose story is really beautiful. He decided that he wanted to travel the whole world on a moped and what ended up happening was his name became slang in Yoruba. ‘Ajala travel’ is slang for someone that can’t sit still. It’s the way a lot of people would describe me, but for me it’s also what a great drum beat does, it’s what great music does to me, it means I can’t sit still and I just want to move. Ajala is all about that movement.”
2023 was a landmark year for Ezra Collective. In addition to becoming the first ever Jazz act to win the Mercury Prize in its 31-year history for their critically-acclaimed album Where I’m Meant To Be, they sold out their entire UK/EU/US tour (including 10,000 tickets at both their Hammersmith & Royal Albert Hall headlines), won Best Jazz Act at last year’s MOBO Awards, held one of the most revered sets at Glastonbury, performed at Quincy Jones’ star-studded birthday party, were named Time Out’s Londoners of 2023 and closed out the year as the final guests of 2023 on The Graham Norton Show & Top of the Pops Review of 2023.
Kicking off 2024 in a similar fashion, they were tapped by Daniel Lee to perform at his Burberry x Harrods takeover and will be launching the British Library’s upcoming Beyond the Bassline: 500 Years of Black British music exhibition on May 11.
