YUSSEF DAYES

YUSSEF DAYES AT VINILO RECORD STORE, SOUTHAMPTON – 13/09/23

I stop at the Rufus Stone on the way for a wee. It’s here that William II was killed by an arrow that “glanced” off an oak tree. A stone commemorates the spot where the oak tree once stood. 

"Glanced"

It’s a quiet place. There’s no one else around. Not a single other person. I’m the only person here. Being a sort of popular legend the incident is most probably fictional, or at least partly so. Life is never as interesting as people want it to be. Or maybe it’s too interesting, so people retreat to a safer world of make believe, stories and legends. But as the sun is setting through some trees, it certainly feels like the kind of place where a king could die.

A king could die here

When I arrive at VINILO it’s already quite full and there’s no way of getting near the front. It’s funny, but in my head I had imagined that I might be the only person here too. But I’m not. Not by a long shot. YUSSEF DAYES is here promoting his debut album called Black Classical Music, a reference to the Nina Simone quote about jazz being a white term to describe black people, so I’m guessing that he’s not a fan of the j-word, with its implications of the colonisation of a Black art form. But the music doesn’t feel “classical” to me. It’s inherently modern twenty-first century music, a deep and heady mix of styles and influences, free, funky, and virtuosic. Dayes has never played in Southampton before, so he says, though he does seem to remember passing though as a child and facetiously celebrates its great history as the birthplace of Craig David. Whether you call it jazz or not, it’s hard to argue with the fact that we are currently living through a golden age of Black British music, and Dayes is now another name to add to the long list of incredibly gifted UK-based musicians doing something that feels genuinely original, progressive and vital.

Golden age

There’s a big queue for signing so I go and have a look at a ruined fourteenth century church that’s just around the corner, and the past the present and the future dwell within me. When I return to the car Dayes is still in the shop so I dash in and ask him to sign my record. “I’m guessing you don’t like the term ‘jazz’,” I say. “It’s not that deep,” he says. “I don’t mind it. I’m just questioning. It’s not that deep.”