Today, August 21, marks the birthday of William “Count” Basie — born in Red Bank, New Jersey in 1904, the man whose band taught the twentieth century how to swing. Basie’s music was never loud for the sake of it. It was precise, unhurried and utterly irresistible: those two-note piano figures, the riffing brass, the rhythm section that locked together like a train on a straight track. Swing, at its root, is a kind of optimism — the faith that a groove, once found, can carry a whole room.
So this week’s set is built around that engine. Not as a history lesson — the Count himself only opens the door — but as a map of where the big-band spirit travelled once it left Kansas City. It landed in Addis Ababa on a fierce tenor saxophone, in the brass bands of Romanian Roma villages, on the funk records of 1970s Ghana, in the charanga orchestras of Havana, and in the studios of young collectives in London, Oslo, Amsterdam and Brooklyn who still build their music the old way: horns, rhythm, and a lift you can feel in your chest.
It is, fittingly, a set for the end of summer. The evenings are drawing in; there’s a first coolness in the air. This is music to go out on — bright, percussive, joyful, played by people who understand that the last dance should be the best one. Twelve tracks, none of them obvious, all of them worth the walk across the room to turn up.
1. Count Basie & His Orchestra — “Jumpin’ at the Woodside”
The anchor, and what an anchor. Recorded in New York in August 1938 — almost to the day, eighty-eight years before this playlist went up — “Jumpin’ at the Woodside” is Kansas City swing at its leanest and meanest: Lester Young’s floating tenor, Buck Clayton’s trumpet, and a riff so perfect it sounds like it was always there. Basie’s band made joy sound effortless. This is the sound of a man on his birthday, smiling.
2. Getatchew Mekurya — “Shellela”
From the great Éthiopiques series: the “Negus of Ethiopian Sax” playing his own ferocious take on the shellela, a warrior chant of the Oromo people, on tenor saxophone over a roaring Addis band. It is one of the most startling sounds in all of jazz — ancient, electric, utterly alive. Nobody else sounds remotely like him.
3. Fanfare Ciocărlia — “Asfalt Tango”
Twelve Roma musicians from a village in northeastern Romania, playing Balkan brass at a velocity that defies physics. “Asfalt Tango” opens their 1999 album Baro Biao and it’s a wedding party distilled: tuba, trumpets, saxophone and percussion in a joyful pile-up. Put this on and see how long your feet stay still.
4. The Budos Band — “Up from the South”
Staten Island’s answer to Afro-funk, signed to Daptone and built on the holy trinity: wah-wah guitar, conga drums and a horn section that means business. “Up from the South” is the title cut of their 2005 debut — a slow-burning celebratory strut that owes as much to 1970s Nigerian funk as to American soul. Instrumental, hypnotic, warm as a summer evening.
5. Sons of Kemet — “My Queen Is Ada Eastman”
Shabaka Hutchings’ quartet — two drummers, a tuba and his saxophone — made some of the most physical jazz of the last decade. This track from Your Queen Is a Reptile honours his Barbadian great-grandmother Ada Eastman, with the poet Joshua Idehen adding a voice of love and defiance. It gallops; it glows; it refuses to sit down.
6. Altın Gün — “Goca Dünya”
Amsterdam’s Altın Gün take Anatolian folk songs and give them the full modern treatment: fuzz bass, funky drums, a clavinet and a melody you’ll be humming by the second chorus. “Goca Dünya” (“The Big World”) is the track that announced them — Turkish psychedelia that swings like a soul record. They were one of the best live bands of the last decade; this is why.
7. Chicha Libre — “Sonido Amazonico”
Chicha is what happened when Peruvian cumbia met the electric guitar and the Farfisa organ in the 1960s — psychedelic, tropical, danceable. Brooklyn’s Chicha Libre revived it lovingly, and the title track of their 2008 debut is pure golden-hour music: surf guitar, organ swells and a bassline that sways. The Amazon never sounded so welcoming.
8. Ebo Taylor — “Heaven”
The great Ghanaian guitarist and bandleader, recorded in 1977 at the height of the highlife-funk fusion. “Heaven” is horn-heavy, sun-drenched call-and-response — and it went on to have a second life decades later when Usher built a hit on it. The original is better. Much better.
9. Cimafunk — “Caramelo”
Havana’s Cimafunk is the great rhythmic diplomat of modern Cuban music — timba, rumba and funk in one joyful pile. “Caramelo”, from his 2021 album El Alimento (made with the American producer Jack Splash), is sticky, horn-filled Afro-Cuban funk with a bassline that refuses to behave. Play it loud and watch the room turn into a dance floor. (Originally I had his big-band summit “El Potaje” with Orquesta Aragón in this slot — but that one hasn’t reached the offline shelves yet, so Caramelo takes its place, same album, same fire.)
10. Menahan Street Band — “Make the Road by Walking”
Brooklyn instrumental soul from the Dunham/Daptone family, led by the man behind El Michels Affair. The title track of their 2008 debut is a horn-and-organ strut so good that Jay-Z built “Roc Boys” on it — but the original has a warmth no sample can capture. Trumpets, sax, bass, and a groove that walks exactly as promised.
11. Jaga Jazzist — “Animal Chin”
From the Norwegian fjord town of Bergen comes one of the most ambitious large ensembles in modern music — nine players who treat jazz, electronica and post-rock as one language. “Animal Chin” closes their 2002 breakthrough A Living Room Hush: it builds from a funky bassline to a soaring, percussive climax with horns stacked like a cathedral. Nordic big-band music, reimagined for the 21st century.
12. Nubiyan Twist — “Lights Out”
Nine musicians from Leeds and London, raised on jazz, Afrobeat and dub, and for this track they did the thing you dream about: they called Nile Rodgers. “Lights Out” from 2024’s Find Your Flame is disco-funk with a horn section and a voice (Aziza Jaye) that could light a room — proof that the big-band spirit is in excellent hands.
That’s the set — twelve tracks, from Kansas City 1938 to London 2024, all of them built on the same unkillable idea: that rhythm, played with heart, is the best company there is. The playlist is waiting for you at YouTube Music, and the same dozen tracks now live in the offline library for the nights the internet goes quiet. Turn it up — summer isn’t over yet.
Listen now: The Friday playlist — Week 34 (YouTube Music)
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaSCTeQidj38
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