Jamz Supernova's My World Interview

Over the past couple of years Jamz Supernova has emerged as one of British radio’s most exciting new DJs and presenters. Her show on BBC 6Music, Jamz Supernova on 6, is on every Saturday afternoon, a build-up to those out partying on a Saturday night but filled with a smorgasbord of surprising songs from across the globe, albeit with a strong UK contingent of jazz, beats and dancefloor fillers. One recent show had everything from Meridian Brothers’ wonky cumbia explorations, Afla Sackey & Afrik Bawantu’s Afro-funk, legendary dub outfit Creation Rebel and RAH & The Ruffcats, who are set to be one of the breakout Afrobeat groups of the year.

“The industry doesn’t like multi-genre because you can’t really pigeonhole it,” she says “But that approach, I think, is about how you build a show. Listen to Gilles Peterson… that’s how you program a show.” It was through Peterson that she got her break on 6Music. “It was lockdown, Gilles took a little sabbatical, [they liked] the stuff that I was doing on [BBC] 1Xtra and they were like ‘right, we’ll try you out for two weeks,’ and that was it.”

The story of how Jamz ended up on radio to begin with was one of fortune. “I went with a friend to an open day [at the Brit School, a London school for the performing arts] to have a look around. Then I saw the radio studio. I was like ‘this is it.’ I spend all my time finding music, I’m always telling my friends about music, I buy mix CDs, make mix CDs, this feels like the perfect place for me to share music… I just applied for it and got in.”

Jamz grew up in South-East London, but her parents were from the Midlands. “They were always really into music.” She remembers family gatherings every Friday when she was young. “My uncle and my aunt would come round and they’d all bring different music. So, my uncle might bring the new Alicia Keys CD, we’d dub it in, or they might bring some reggae, and they would constantly be swapping music. Sound system culture is very much at the base of what we listen to.”

She started developing her own tastes in unusual places. “You’d get on the bus or be in the hairdressers and someone would come in and sell bootleg CDs. I’d always buy them, and that was from about 11 years old. I remember really getting into Tupac and printing off the lyrics and living on the conspiracy forums. I loved his poetry. It’s quite a dark song, but I love ‘Brenda’s Got a Baby’. Also, ‘Changes’, a beautiful song of hope . Within Black Lives Matter it was a song that came up quite a lot, but then I also heard it at a fundraiser for Palestine when I was in Melbourne [Australia]. How old is that song and how many instances has it been played as a song of hope and change?”

After her stint at the Brit School, she had a show on Reprezent Radio, a community station now based in Brixton, and simultaneously was working at the BBC as an intern. Her youth spent listening to R&B, UK hip-hop that she discovered through pirate radio, and UK funky (an umbrella term for a number of UK-born club music genres with a focus on groove) all fed into those roles. “I’d work on the UKG Show, the Dancehall Show [both on BBC 1Xtra, the BBC’s station dedicated to Black and urban music], I was working on every single show possible. And I loved MistaJam at the time and his take on being so broad [but] my music taste was maturing out of R&B, into other genres and I remember loving Dub Phizik’ ‘Marka’. They’re from Manchester and it was sort of post-dubstep but the way the guy spat sounded like Jamaican toasting.” In 2011 she discovered SoundCloud, an online music platform which allows artists to easily upload and share their songs. “It opened me up to music from around the world,” says Jamz, and it sparked an idea. “[I thought] I’m going to take all the music that I’m finding online and make a radio show out of that. During that time, I was coming across people like Sango, who was mixing R&B vocals with baile funk beats, then there was Enchufada [a Portuguese label known for global club music].”

She was also careful not to lose her roots in the UK and was an early supporter of music that didn’t fit in the urban category. “I wanted to be your alternative Black show. There was so much amazing music in the UK that we were not playing, they’re not getting played anywhere on 1Xtra. I wanted to be the person to play them and support them, people like Ezra Collective, Joe Armon-Jones, Children of Zeus, Hak Baker, Greentea Peng. I was quite emboldened.”

When she got offered her own 6Music show, she was ready. “I was like, finally, I can put these two worlds together. I can play jazz, I can play something soulful, I can play something from South Africa or Zambia. I can play electronic songs as well. I think with the sixth show, I opened with Afronaut, ‘Transcend M.E.’, a broken beat song, 20 years old. It was the most freedom I’d ever had.”

Jamz’ musical universe expanded via a gig with the British Council’s Selector Radio which took her to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Zambia, Malawi, Turkey, South Africa and Colombia, and these travels have been reflected in her show, with special episodes dedicated to each country. Colombia left a particular mark; she’s returned twice since, visiting Quibdó on the country’s Afro-descendent populated Pacific Coast on her last trip. “It was probably the most profound place that I’ve been in terms of seeing a different side of African culture, seeing how the traditions have been preserved, the oral traditions. Coming from a Black British family and being so disconnected from the Caribbean, to see that, I found it soul enriching. I know what it means to be Black British, I know Jamaican culture surface level, but I don’t know the traditions. To go somewhere like Quibdó, it feels a lot closer.”

One artist she discovered in Colombia was rapper Verito Asprilla. “She’s a good example that you have to be on the ground to learn sometimes. I thought being on the internet discovering something then playing it on the radio was enough [but] to really understand a place, you have to understand the nuances and to do your due, you need to go there. It can’t always be this transactional relationship; you need to invest in the community as well.”

As well as being the boss of the Future Bounce record label, which is still very active, Jamz has launched Between the Lines, an interview-based podcast whose initial guests include Yazmin Lacey, Daudi Matsiko and Ego Ella May: “The idea is one song, we go through the lyrics and then the tangents of where it takes us,” she explains, “we break down the lyrics of where they were, who they are, when they wrote that song, the messages behind it or the life experiences, and then we talk about the craft of songwriting as well. It’s a bit like therapy.”

Between the Lines is available at https://fanlink.tv/BetweenTheLines

This article originally appeared in the July 2024 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue – subscribe today