The UK jazz renaissance names the 2010s-onward London jazz scene — mostly South London (Peckham, Brixton, New Cross) — that produced Ezra Collective, Sons of Kemet, The Comet Is Coming, Moses Boyd, Nubya Garcia, Kamaal Williams, Yussef Dayes, and Shabaka Hutchings as the central figure across several ensembles. The institutional foundations are Tomorrow's Warriors (the free youth jazz program founded by bassist Gary Crosby and educator Janine Irons in 1991) and the informal South London venue circuit (the Dalston-based Total Refreshment Centre through 2018, the Steez session series in the early 2010s, plus Jazz Cafe and Cafe OTO), with Brownswood Recordings (Gilles Peterson) and Enter The Jungle Records as the record-label side. Musically the scene folds Afrobeat, Caribbean dub, grime, dubstep, and UK garage into jazz vocabulary, running parallel to Kamasi Washington's spiritual-jazz revival on the American side but tuning the result to the specifically London multicultural experience of Windrush-generation descendants and second-generation African immigrants.

The decisive window is 2013-2016, when Tomorrow's Warriors graduates (Shabaka Hutchings, b. 1984; Nubya Garcia, b. 1991; Moses Boyd, b. 1991; the Koleoso brothers of Ezra Collective, b. mid-1990s) began playing together at Total Refreshment Centre and Steez, while Kamasi Washington's The Epic (2015, US) opened international ears to a related spiritual-jazz revival. In 2016 Yussef Kamaal (Yussef Dayes and Kamaal Williams) released Black Focus on Brownswood, which is now the institutional starting point of the scene. Sons of Kemet's Your Queen is a Reptile (2018) was Mercury Prize-nominated, Moses Boyd's Displaced Diaspora (2019) was Mercury-nominated, Nubya Garcia's Source (2020) was Mercury-nominated. In 2023 Ezra Collective's Where I'm Meant to Be (2022) won the Mercury Prize — the first jazz group ever to do so — cementing the scene's status.

First, listen for the rhythmic complexity: Sons of Kemet's twin-drummer plus tuba plus tenor-sax lineup, Femi Koleoso's Afrobeat-inflected drumming with Ezra Collective, Moses Boyd's grime-and-dubstep-informed drum programming. Second, the tenor saxophone tone of Shabaka Hutchings and Nubya Garcia — big, warm, in the direct lineage of Sonny Rollins and Pharoah Sanders spiritual jazz, but shaped by Caribbean and West African phrasing. Third, the way traditional jazz vocabulary — Charles Mingus, Art Blakey, Herbie Hancock — folds into Afrobeat and hip-hop without displacing either side. Fourth, the use of voice as an equal partner to horns: Sons of Kemet's collaborations with poet Joshua Idehen, Ezra Collective's guest features with Sampa the Great and Emeli Sandé.

Start with Yussef Kamaal's Black Focus (2016, Brownswood) — the institutional origin point. Then Sons of Kemet's Your Queen is a Reptile (2018) and Moses Boyd's Displaced Diaspora (2019). Deeper: Nubya Garcia's Source (2020), Ezra Collective's Where I'm Meant to Be (2022, Mercury Prize-winning), Shabaka Hutchings' Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace (2024, his flute-only reinvention). Boiler Room recordings from Total Refreshment Centre give the venue-scale sense of the scene.

Tomorrow's Warriors, founded in 1991 by bassist Gary Crosby and Janine Irons, is the free youth jazz program that trained almost every major figure of the UK jazz renaissance — Shabaka Hutchings, Nubya Garcia, Moses Boyd, Femi Koleoso, and dozens of the scene's second tier. It is a non-profit, and its role in producing this scene is one of the strongest evidence points for state and philanthropic investment in music education. Second: in 2024 Shabaka Hutchings retired his tenor saxophone from public performance, ended Sons of Kemet and The Comet Is Coming, and released Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace on Impulse! Records as a flute-focused solo album — a pivot that stunned the scene. Third: Ezra Collective's Femi Koleoso and his brother TJ (bass), Dylan Jones (trumpet), James Mollison (tenor sax), and Joe Armon-Jones (keys) are all Tomorrow's Warriors alumni.