{"id":326,"date":"2025-03-01T20:34:10","date_gmt":"2025-03-01T19:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/?p=326"},"modified":"2026-05-07T19:02:28","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T18:02:28","slug":"keziah-jones-rythm-is-universal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/2025\/03\/01\/keziah-jones-rythm-is-universal\/","title":{"rendered":"KEZIAH JONES, RYTHM IS UNIVERSAL"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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From the streets of London to the caf\u00e9s of Paris, from Lagos to notebooks filled with fragments, riffs, and visions, Keziah Jones has always been in motion. The inventor of “Blufunk” (a genre where Yoruba rhythms collide with funk, blues, and jazz) the Nigerian-born musician is as much a poet of sound as he is a cartographer of cities, identities, and contradictions. For CITY, he opens up about rhythm as resistance, songwriting as ritual, and Lagos as a chord no one can quite resolve.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Your sound is famously hard to pin down: Blufunk, as you call it, blends funk, blues, rock, Yoruba percussion, and jazz. How did that hybrid sound emerge?<\/strong><\/em>
It really came from playing solo on the streets. When you’re alone with a guitar, you have to be everything: the rhythm section, the bassline, the melody. Over time, I developed a style where all of that happens at once. That\u2019s Blufunk. It was born in London and Paris, but it\u2019s always carried Lagos in its bones, especially in the percussion. The rhythm is key. It\u2019s the one thing that connects everything.<\/p>\n

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So rhythm comes first?<\/strong><\/em>
Always. Rhythm is universal. When everything else gets fragmented (identity, culture, language), rhythm still brings us together. It\u2019s what unites.<\/p>\n

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Your lyrics often reflect diasporic identity, social tensions, memory. Is songwriting a political act for you?<\/strong><\/em>
It\u2019s more of a reflection than a statement. I write from my experience: growing up Nigerian, being educated in England, constantly moving. That gives you a fractured lens, but also a rich one. The question I keep coming back to is: what can unify us in the middle of all these contradictions? Again, rhythm is the answer.<\/p>\n

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Can you describe your writing process?<\/strong><\/em>
It changes all the time. I\u2019ve been writing in notebooks since I was twelve. I write down what\u2019s around me: a color, a sound, a fleeting image. Later, when I find a riff or a groove, I return to those fragments and sometimes a song just\u2026 appears. But honestly, the best writing comes from doing nothing. Just sitting and waiting. If your mind has something to say, it will rise.\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b\u200b<\/p>\n

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You\u2019ve seen several generations of African and diaspora musicians come up. What do you make of the new wave?<\/strong><\/em>
I love that they\u2019ve taken ownership. Back in the day, you had to spend decades learning your instrument, then deal with record labels and all that machinery. Today, young artists represent themselves: they control their image, their business. That\u2019s powerful. But my advice is this: use your music to uplift. Not everything has to be serious, but the music that really lasts, that changes things, carries some truth. That\u2019s what soul is.<\/p>\n

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You\u2019ve mentioned artists like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Curtis Mayfield. Do you still feel part of that lineage?<\/strong><\/em>
Absolutely. Those artists weren\u2019t just playing music: they were offering commentary, channeling resistance. We absorb music together. It seeps into our psyche. It shapes the way we walk through the world.<\/p>\n

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You also draw inspiration from literature. Which writers have marked you most?<\/strong><\/em>
Bukowski, for his rawness. Murakami, for the quiet magic. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, obviously, and Dambudzo Marechera. Marechera was wild. He lived the fracture he wrote about. Right now, I\u2019m reading Akala. He dissects class, race, empire. That speaks to me. I had to deconstruct all of that in myself too, being Nigerian, schooled in Britain, taught to see the world through a British lens.<\/p>\n

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Three cities keep coming up in your work: Lagos, London, Paris.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>What do they mean to you?<\/strong><\/em>
London is where I first played, where I learned the street as a stage. Paris gave me space to reflect. But Lagos\u2026 Lagos is home. It\u2019s intense, dissonant, beautiful, brutal. If it were a guitar chord, it would be one of those strange ones: partly harmonious, partly jarring. That is Lagos: you love it and you survive it at the same time.<\/p>\n

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Following the release of his album\u00a0Alive & Kicking\u00a0earlier this year,\u00a0<\/strong>Keziah Jones is hitting the road in France for a summer tour:<\/strong>
July 10: Jazz \u00e0 Juan Festival, Juan-les-Pins
July 15: Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Antique, Vienne
July 20: Les Vieilles Charrues Festival, Carhaix
July 25: Th\u00e9\u00e2tre de la Mer, S\u00e8te
July 30: Musilac Festival, Aix-les-Bains<\/p>\n

Photos by\u00a0<\/em>Morgan Otagburuagu<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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INSIDE KEZIAH’S HOUSE<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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From the streets of London to the caf\u00e9s of Paris, from Lagos to notebooks filled with fragments, riffs, and visions, Keziah Jones has always been in motion. The inventor of “Blufunk” (a genre where Yoruba rhythms collide with funk, blues, and jazz)…<\/p>\n

Read more\u2026KEZIAH JONES, RYTHM IS UNIVERSAL<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","iawp_total_views":23,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-lagos","category-music","ratio-3-2","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1199,"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions\/1199"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citymagazine.city\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}