I have had much love for the voice of Eska Mtumgwezi since I first heard her dulcet tones riffing off the back of a standard performance of Bye Bye Blackbird at a Jazz Cafe afternoon jam session many moons ago. Since then I have followed her avidly, listening to her collabs with various artists and catching the occasional live performance. I live for the day when she finally gets an album out. And, though i’m not holding my breath anymore, I’m hoping it’ll be soon.

I was surfing for more of Eska’s singing when I came upon Speak, the debut album by Jazz bassist Michael Olatuja and have got to say that I am mightily blown away. It’s sort of an ensemble showpiece, produced and composed by Olatuja - think: those Quincy Jones albums where all these great songs and vocalists come together in a party of music and song.

The album features the vocal stylings of some of my favourite vocalists - Eska, David Lynden Hall, Ty, Andrew Roachford - and some I haven’t heard of but who I now dig unconditionally - Onaje Jefferson, Alicia Olatuja.

I guess if you were tyring to pidgeonhole it, the album would fit somewhere inside the AfroJazzSoul section, but it’s so much more than that. It’s laid back and groovy with polyphonic vocal harmonies one minute, and the next it’s full on drums and rhythms. I love it when musicians push the envelope and try to develop something new and pull their various influences together and this is what this album does, pulling on Olatuja’s Yoruba Nigerian roots, inflected with London sound and a certain New York insouciance.

The album’s been out since September last year and is avialable on iTunes and Spotify. I just hope it gets the audience and recognition it deserves.

Back when I was young, dumb and full of bull, I used to write music reviews. The pay was dire but it was good fun, I went lots of gigs, got lots of free music (this was before the internet, when CDs were still worth something and having a music collection was a point of pride) and even interviewed a few musicians. I did a good job of it but rapidly realised that it just wasn’t going to be a full-on career trajectory for me.

It’s the way I interact with music. I’m not one of these people who catalogues what I’ve listened to into train-spotters’ lists. You know the kind of person who can tell you the date an album was released, knows the name of everyone who played in the band and what they went on to do next, what their early influences were. I’m not the kind of person who can go into the nitty gritty of chord changes and the difference between a 4x4 beat and 120 bpm and all that technical crap.

I just like music and I know what music I like and what sounds good. I don’t really care about provenance or how a certain bit of music changed the musical landscape. I’m just as likely to be humming a tune from Sesame Street as I am likely to be listening to Beethoven. It’s all good music to me.

I guess eclectic is about as close as you’d get to describing my musical interests. I hear a song, I like it, it get’s filed away somewhere in my subconscious and then somewhere down the line it occurs to me that I would really like to hear that song again or I find myself humming a tune and wondering where I’ve heard it from and then seeking it out.

In my head is a constant soundtrack. It never goes away and any random thing can trigger it off - It’s like having a unlimited gigabyte ipod shuffle in my head - only sometimes the music comes in snatches that will keep at me until I find out where they’re from. Other times it’ll be a random lyric or sound or title and I need to find out what it is and listen to it immediately.

The internet has been invaluable to me in this respect. Googleing a random lyric, finding a title and tracking it down on Spotify or Youtube or, to a much lesser extent, Last FM (like I said, not many people access music the way I do so it’s pointless getting recommendations from other people or listening to artists’ playlists).

The great thing about both Spotify and Youtube is you can get quite obscure, which is great for me. I also discovered a website that had downloads of music from adverts and old tv shows (I can’t remember what it’s called now. I’ll update with an address if I can still find it). It was like bumping into a long lost and very much missed friend on your way home from a particularly shitty day at work. I spent the entire day downloading theme songs from old tv shows like The Persuaders and Mary Mungo and Midge. These were tunes that had been on my internal shuffle, that I hadn’t been able to get hold of for yonks, and there they were and they were free and I could listen to them as much as I liked. Where else would I have found all four versions of Way Down in the Hole (Theme from The Wire?) Heaven.

Here is an example of what I have been listening to in the past week:

Theme songs: Daria, Mary Mungo and Midge, Way Down in the Hole (Blind Boys of Alabama), The Protectors (Aenues and Alley Ways)

Show tunes:

I Happen To Like New York - Maria Freedman, the entire songbook of Sweeney Todd and Sunday in the Park with George by Sondheim (I love Sondheim)

Jazz:

Freedom Jazz Dance - a vocal version by  Jeff Robinson and another version by Eddie Jefferson

Other random stuff:

Bobby Caldwell

Joni Mitchell

David Crosby

Gomez

Dresden Dolls

Miles Davis

You Me At Six

Prefab Sprout

A whole load of 80s pop

I could go on but I’m boring myself. What I’d like to know is: is there anybody out there who listens to music like this? And if not, how do other people listen to music. It’d be interesting to know.