“Someone said to me the other day that listening to my show feels like they get to travel,” says Jamz Supernova. “I want to share an element of escapism with people: they can learn about different cultures and communities around the world that are important and deserve to have their stories told.” That’s exactly what the London-based DJ, broadcaster and founder of Future Bounce does with her BBC Radio 6 show, bringing global music to her listeners, wherever they are. “Listening to music from around the world is a good thing for humanity. It builds empathy, understanding and allows us to lean on one another for joy,” she says.
That’s been translated into her new album, Dance Around The World (out now): a 16 track-record reflecting the years that Jamz has spent travelling, DJing and broadcasting everywhere from Latin America to the Pacific. “Putting it together meant looking at the global family I’ve made over the years. Some artists feel like portals to those places for me.” The record is designed to transport listeners into each artist’s culture, honoured and reinvented through their music.
Each track comes with its own story. Take Ny Ampela by Simangavole & Soa Ravelo, an all-female group from Réunion who play maloya, the music born of enslaved Malagasy and African workers on the island’s sugar estates in collaboration with Malagasy artist Soa Ravelo. “I wanted more people to hear their amazing song: these two women from Réunion Island and Madagascar coming together for Black sisterhood,” says Jamz. “Much of [the album] was about platforming and showcasing these artists to a wider audience. They’re well-known within their scenes, but more broadly they’re still quite underground.”
For Jamz, each track holds history while pointing to where electronic music goes next. Each of the featured artists makes the case for the dancefloor as a place where culture is both invented and preserved. Dance Around The World looks at “who we are and where we’re from and how that informs the music we make,” she says.
This idea of building new futures from an inherited history brings us back to this month’s theme at Service95: Ancestors. “When I think about ancestry, I often think about the lineage of the people who have shaped who we are, but who we might not feel connected to. We often lose touch with our family history and how far it goes back,” says Jamz. “But something within us, spiritually, lets us tap into and call onto them. They laid the foundations, survived so we could survive, and passed on knowledge and traditions so we could be here today doing the things we do.”
These reflections on identity, migration, community and cultural revolution are echoed in Dance Around The World, from Sudanese singer and oud player Sulaf, who sets verses written by her great grandfather, the Sufi poet Abdelazim Sayed Ahmed, to music, to La Gata, the Panamanian Jamaican musician-historian whose works traces reggaeton’s Black roots.
When the album ends, keep going with this extended playlist Jamz has pulled together exclusively for Service95: global rhythms built for the dancefloor. See Jamz talk through her top five tracks in the video below, and press play on the full tracklist via our Spotify.
Dance Around The World by Jamz Supernova is out now.
