Gary Crosby OBE & Janine Irons OBE: Founders of Tomorrow's Warriors

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0:59Elliot Moss:Welcome to the Jazz Shapers podcast from Mishkondorea. What you're about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM. However, the music has been cut due to rights issues.

1:12This is Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss on Jazz FM. In partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal.

1:26Listening Colour.

1:27Elliot Moss:Hello and a very warm welcome to this special edition of Jazz Shapers live from the Love Supreme Jazz Festival.

1:39Elliot Moss:Fantastic. As you can tell, I'm not alone. I'm Elliot Moss and Jazz Shapers is where I get to bring the shapers of the business world together with the greatest musician shaping the world of jazz, soul and blues. My guests today are pioneers in both business and music. Gary Crosby, OBE, and Janine Irons, OBE, founders of Tomorrow's Warriors.

2:02Elliot Moss:Tomorrow's Warriors, the creative producer and talent development agency, increasing opportunity, diversity and excellence in and through jazz. As a founding member of the Jazz Warriors, an influential collective of young black musicians, Gary had a long held love of supporting younger people. rooted in his time in youth clubs in the 70s and later working with apprentices at his construction job meanwhile trained in classical piano and contemporary dance and hating her city job find out that's true janine as a pa for an international bank janine blagged her way perished the thought into one of gary's jazz jamaica gigs and was driven to try and make the young black musician seesaw there more visible in a jazz scene that was as she says pale male and stale janine and gary founded tomorrow's warriors in 1991 aiming to nurture aspiring young artists from diverse backgrounds to and i quote discover their magic and realize their creative ambitions they've since supported an incredible 15 000 individuals and accredited with tearing up the international music scene not bad and why are they able to say that because with wildly influential alumni at tomorrow's warriors including a shout out for Nubai Garcia, Dennis Baptiste, Shavaka Hutchins, Moses Boyd, Soweto Kinch, the members of Ezra Collective, Zara McFarlane, Nathaniel Faisley, Bunker Golding, I could go on.

3:30Elliot Moss:Gary Crosby, OB, Janine Irons, OB, for those of you in the know, and most of you are in the know, these two people are probably the most influential people behind what I think has been the resurgence of British and now international jazz it's extraordinary it's an absolute honor to have you two here Gary and Janine I'm going to start with Janine just because everyone always starts with Gary I know this is tempting working together married together good advice to people go do that well we're not actually married so we're um although I've been thinking about it maybe we should how many years you've been together uh 32 30 33 yeah and and in 1991 when you started working together did it seem like a sensible idea um well he he started it off didn't you at the jazz cafe but um i came along two years later i mean we didn't think about you know immediately we didn't think we were going to do it together it's only when we kind of got together and we thought, actually, we make a really good team.

4:35Yeah, but it's kind of worked for us, hasn't it? Yeah, of course it's worked. We're still together. I think we were having, I was having fun for two years. Then I invited Janine to a club I used to play and she said, this is not fun, this is work. So it starts two years after, well, Janine started the Tomorrow's Warriors. Prior to that, it was just Gary and friends hanging out at the Jazz Cafe. Right.

5:00Elliot Moss:And, you know, that place in between the Gary and friends hanging out and then Janine bringing some structure and some business to it. That's exactly the wording I should do. Was that, you were obviously open to that. And I guess one of your mantras has been young musicians need to know how to run the business. Of course. Although I was a musician and have been and come from a musical background, I was also an engineer that used to work, you know, for the local council, for private individuals. So I understood not only just dialogue between different individuals, but trade. Input must equal output.

5:33So I was always aware of that. And I was always so aware that the jazz community didn't like money and didn't understand it. Hence why we always had managers or agents looking after us. So I was fully aware that we needed structure. and Janine took some photos of me at Union Chapel and about six months later I needed some photos. It wasn't six months later, it was about two weeks later. Was it two weeks? There's a story here. All right, story. But anyway, when she showed me the photos, there was like an invoice, how much I could use it and everything was just perfect. And I hadn't even bought it yet and I just thought that's who we need.

6:19Elliot Moss:there's something i i think about a lot i named some names which you are both associated with and i think about this in terms of sport and in business as well how do you know when you've got a super talented person in front of you because because it's a game isn't it i mean not everyone is super talented there might be and i know we're going to come on janine to your your feeling that everyone should have access to music but gary how can you spot them manners generally are based the first time I meet somebody if they have good manners just good basic manners that's it there's there's obviously an artistic side to it as well but that starts first just have good manners and beyond the manners you know you see you see young people who work really hard and make it and you see young people who are super talented and don't make it is that the time all the time but if they ain't got good manners, they're not coming close to me.

7:18What do you mean by Matt? For you, Gary, what do good manners look like? Polite, realise that they are obviously an artist, but they're no more important than somebody who may help them to the next stage, where it's a person in marketing, media, on the radio, just have good manners. It's about not having ego. I was going to say, it sounds like humility. I wouldn't say not having ego, because you need ego. Not letting your ego get in the way. Yes. Yeah. If you're an artist. And also showing, yeah, showing real promise and passion for music and what they're doing, you know, and showing interest, I think, in the music.

8:02Yeah, of course. And actually being able to play, you know, whether it's to play their instrument or to use their voice. But a lot of the time when they come to us, they won't know how good they are.

8:13Elliot Moss:Yeah. I think I read Nibai Garcia was super shy. Sorry? Nibai Garcia was super shy. Sorry, exactly. Can I be more, I'm beginning to feel comfortable now, so I can let go. Go for it. My dad had it in one word, but you may not understand it. It's a Jamaican term. He said, brought up seat. All right, so there's five of us in this house and he had to control us. And it's, I learned from that. Just that word. Good brought up seat. Of course there are people who don't have that chance to have that experience. But once you're over 17, 18, you've got to learn or you fail. Brought up C. Brought up C. Stay with me for much more brought up C here on this live edition of Jazz Shapers and recorded live at Love Supreme Jazz Festival.

9:03Elliot Moss:They'll be back in a couple of minutes. Don't go anywhere. Jazz Shapers on Jazz FM. In partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. You can enjoy all our former business shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast, and you can hear this very program again if you pop Jazz Shapers into your preferred podcast platform. We're live at the Love Supreme Jazz Festival, and there is a live audience as well, ladies and gentlemen.

9:30Elliot Moss:That's the live audience, just in case you didn't know. my my guest today gary crosby ob janine irons ob founders of tomorrow's wars the credit producer and talent development agency championing emerging and established jazz musicians janine i read somewhere and i sort of go back to my studying of marxism in politics you said the structure just doesn't work for young black musicians and this was 30 years ago just tell me a little bit more about why there was a mini revolution why in reality what you've gone and done is created a parallel universe for these musicians. I read again something about your sense of injustice and how that was triggered.

10:06Elliot Moss:Just tell me a little bit more about that. Well I've always throughout growing up and being at school you know I didn't have a good experience at school. I went to some very good schools but I've actually been thrown out of every school I've been to apart from one and that was because it was a one-year course and I started two months in so I didn't really have enough time to get myself into trouble but it was really this sense of you know I was in the wrong place you know I was in a very academic place although I'd you know I passed my 11 plus I've got my O levels all of that but I was a creative person you know I studied music I studied dance my parents saw the value of the arts but in the schools I was in there was no space for that creativity and hence why I was always you know head to head with with teachers and everything but there were a couple of people who championed me at school so even when I was getting thrown out you know they're saying you know come around afterwards I'll help you with your homework and all of that so you don't fall behind and I think that was one of the most important things to have somebody championing you I was also one of very few black people in my school in all of my schools in fact so you know and there was definitely a racial um element to what was going on but when I met Gary and I saw you know this amazing talent on the stage but I couldn't see there was no visibility of these young people in the media or anywhere and um You know, I just felt we need to do something about it.

11:50And part of why they weren't getting those opportunities was because, you know, they were not getting the opportunities at school. A lot of the parents as well were more focused on, you know, they need to be doctors, accountants, lawyers, all of that. So the creative and the artistic side kind of went by the wayside. We also didn't have the teachers. You know, we couldn't see ourselves represented in people teaching it, the people presenting it, the people on the stage or in the audience. All right. So all of this needed to change and it needed sort of systemic change.

12:32Elliot Moss:We're live at the Love Supreme Jazz Festival. And I'm now going to ask Gary something I've been thinking about, which is this point about this conversation you had. I think it was in Jamaica, actually. And it was apparently, this is what I was told, Gary. You could say earlier, it was not in Jamaica. It wasn't my cousin, it was my friend. When did this conversation, this alleged conversation happen where Gary Crosby went, you know what, I love being a musician, but there's more to life than that? No, that's always been, I've always loved being a musician and always will be, and it always comes first.

13:02But the job that needed to be done required something slightly different. So I've never gone away from being, I've never considered myself an educator. I share and I help others, but I'm not an educator. I've never worked in any of the colleges, although I've had close relationships with them. So I don't know how I've got this title of being an educator. I suppose it happens by, what do they call it, osmosis? Yeah. Maybe that, but it's never been different.

13:33Elliot Moss:But you obviously relate to people, just the way that people talk about you, Gary. I mean, so forget the educator thing. What is it, do you think, as you look at a young person that you can really help unlock for them? How do you do it? A lot of the, like, can I say the black players, a lot of them, I'm from the same background, and I knew that. And I knew how to unlock the strengths based on, I understand what their fears and insecurities were. And is that conversation, though? It's sounding too technical. No, no, no, because I'm basically, it's magic. I don't know. Why should I be giving away my secrets?

14:15I mean, everybody else is going to do it. It's magic. It's locked in a box. Also, I had studied, I know I'm from a very working class background, I had studied a bit of Freud and I understood the psychology of people. And I used a lot of that too. because I knew myself what I was like. I knew guys my age, how they would respond to a microphone in front of them or somebody from a different background asking them questions about supposedly African-American music. I understood that. So I just manipulated those situations that I had experienced. We're going to come back to you. The Jamaica? Yeah, the Jamaica question.

15:00It was my cousin. He was the one that ignited not what I should do, but to do something for my people. Basically, we're up in the mountain in St. Thomas, and he had been there 25 years, had built up a very good business. I was sitting around with him and his workers, and he blew this smoke in my face, a plume of smoke. I don't know what it was, but... And the plume of smoke came with a question, what are you doing in England? And I told him I was going back to play with Becky Musoleki in London at Ronnie Scott's. And he looked at me bemused, carried on talking. Another plume of smoke hit me about 10 minutes later.

15:51What are you doing in England? Answered the same question. And on the third time, I realized what he was actually saying, because he had already told me what he was doing for his local community. Although he was a landowner, he was also an electrical and mechanical engineer, and he contributed a lot of his skills to his local community for free. So I believe when he asked me what I was doing in England, he was questioning what I was doing in England. it's there and then I realized how selfish I had become I was just basically playing music

16:27Elliot Moss:having a good time and just a quick and thank you for being um so open about that but the the buzz Gary of course you're a musician the buzz of playing versus the buzz of seeing a at the highest level the incredible kids that have become adults and become brilliant musicians well brought up great manners or be you playing your music which gives you the bigger buzz neither because it's usually at different times and the thing about feeling elated happens in a spontaneous moment you can't carry it to another moment your experience is your experience it can't be you know this experience we're having now 10 seconds later i can't have the same experience so they're both equal um as you get older of course seeing other people do it it's it's quite exciting it's just as exciting as playing because i don't play as much after um eight years ago you know i had to slow down a bit so it's it's equal i mean you agree i don't i believe janine gets this i think i'm guessing we're going to come to gene but i'm guessing if she disagreed she might of Syria.

17:40Well, she can't disagree for my experience. Well, that's true. It is the experience. I'm like Gary. Yeah, she can disagree, but here we go.

17:49Elliot Moss:Final chat. Yeah, just hold that and maybe just let it go. Final chat, come up with Gary Crosby and Ginny Nines and we've got some Nubai Garcia as billed earlier for you too. That's in just a moment. Don't go anywhere. Jazz Shapers on Jazz FM in partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. We're live at the Love Supreme Jazz Festival. Gary Crosby and Janine Alliance are my business shapers, my founders, just for a few more minutes. Janine, you're quoted as saying, and I think I know what you meant, that Gary saved you when you met each other. And obviously, I don't think you needed saving, but I imagine you were referring to something specific.

18:25Elliot Moss:Would you explain what that is and where life has taken you since you and Gary Crosby met all those years ago? Gary saved me in different ways, actually. The first thing was he got me out of the city. You know, I'd been working in the city of London in an international trading company, not on the money-making side, on the admin side, which is where I learned all my skills. And I hated it because it was all just money, money, money, money, money, money, money, the whole thing, you know, and you're surrounded by a lot of philistines, frankly. So I wanted to get out of it. And so finding Gary and then sort of him helping me find me and what I was really good at, which was championing other people.

19:15You know, I left the city to become a photographer and I wasn't, I was rubbish at selling me, really. And I very quickly found that out and I wasn't comfortable selling me. so once I had somebody else to promote to champion I found it so much easier and it made me feel great because I could see others really benefiting from something I could do and seeing them start to excel so that was the first thing the second way he saved me was that I had kind of lost myself culturally because I wasn't around anybody who looked like me and I was getting lost you know there was I mentioned this before that you know I worked in an Austrian bank and I have a horrible horrible memory of turning up in an Austrian national dress and it's like what the hell what the hell was going on you know to what was going on in my head and so I really had lost myself but it was that whole thing about looking for acceptance from people who were tolerating me perhaps you know but I was trying to get an in where there wasn't one and so when I met Gary I found me you know he introduced me to people who look like me and you know that's where I kind of found myself so that also feeds into what we wanted with Tomorrow's Warriors so that young people will come into a space where they see people who look like them they walk like them they talk like them you know and they're interested in all the same things so that's the environment we've tried to create and it's not an environment just for people who look like me it's for people who look like all of us you know we want tomorrow's worries to be about all of us

21:20Elliot Moss:so yeah that that's a great answer thank you uh gary i'm i'm gonna look forward because we're gonna we're gonna be running out of time very shortly before we open up to the audience 30 years plus of doing what you both do you've created this space you talk about people sharing the gifts and teaching the next person what does the next few years look like in terms of you shaping the future of british and international jazz does it more of the same in terms of shaping the music uh not shaping the music but shaping shaping the next generation the scene i think Janine is better answered because um I'm not that concerned about the structural side I mean I'm confident that the people I work with will look after it it's it's not really down to me the future is not down to me I'm 70 you know I've had a stroke a brain hemorrhage it's got nothing to do with me what I'm concerned with is passing on the skills yeah and the attitude a certain attitude for them to continue it's not down to me i i to be honest um you've mentioned all these now i'm gonna be real honest with you i remember speaking with moses boyd about the music some of those guys are playing i'm teaching them duke ellington coltrane and they're playing afrobeat and i remember asking moses once about it and he said they're not actually playing for me they're playing for their audience, which is the correct thing.

22:52So it has nothing to do with me. As long as the art of improvisation, jazz improvisation, survives and develops, I'm happy. I play with Dennis Baptiste four times a year. Dennis Baptiste, Andrew McCormack, Rod Youngs. I'm happy. I'm cool. Gary just wants to play bass. I was just going to say, this is a guy like,

23:16Elliot Moss:just give me my instrument, please, and leave me alone. Yeah. Yeah, fair enough. That's why we're really, we're well matched. Yeah, he's like, you've got the structure, you've got that. We never argue. Yeah, yes we do.

23:32Elliot Moss:No, I'm loving it. No tension at all. Both got smiles on faces. I've never won an argument. That's a different matter. It's been fantastic talking to you. We're going to play out with our last track. We've actually chosen Duke Ellington's second line. Gary, would you just explain why Duke Ellington is the man for you? That's one of the hardest questions I've ever asked because there is no other reason why he shouldn't be. One of the greatest, not just musicians, but one of the greatest people that ever came. It's just too much. Looking around, most of you should know Duke Ellington. If you don't...

24:13Lots of nodding. please um start start now that particular track don't listen to that while you're cooking you'll burn it up brilliant right questions anyone got a question in the audience i know

24:28Elliot Moss:we haven't got very long yes we can we chuck a mic over there fantastic hi thank you that was amazing speech i work with eight to ten year olds and i find it really challenging to get volunteers to work with that age group, either parents or other volunteers, have you got any advice that might work? Don't do it.

24:55No, I tend to aim for... We go older. Slightly older. So we just come up at 11 upwards and there's a reason for that. Yeah, and I personally tend to get involved more with 15, 16 year olds. They've made a decision that they won't, you know, there's so many unused instruments in all of our houses. I know it. I know it. You know, it happened to me as well. Thank you. Yeah, but getting volunteers is hard enough anyway. So start a bit older. Yeah. And I think for that age group, it's also pretty difficult.

25:35Elliot Moss:Got time for one or two more questions, gentlemen with the Yamaha cap. Hi, you've done an amazing job bringing through new talent, but who will carry the torch when you finally retire and decide you're too tired to do it? I'm glad you asked that because succession planning is a big thing for us at the moment. You know, we're both getting old and but we are very determined that tomorrow's worries will live on well beyond us. So currently, we're working on getting our own building for a start and to set down permanent HQ where the organization can continue. We've also just taken on a fantastic full time chief operating officer who is none other than Dennis Baptiste's wife.

26:30So she's a hugely experienced CEO. She's set up an international charity with offices in Sierra Leone, in Ethiopia, Kenya, America and London. So she has a wealth of experience. Plus, she's kind of been by our side since we started Tomorrow's Warriors, you know. So she understands jazz musicians. I mean, if she understands Dennis, she definitely understands jazz musicians. But, you know, we're also, our ethos is each one to each one. So all of our young people have it sort of embedded within them that they have a responsibility to keep this going. So I'm confident that, you know, it will still be there after we decide to hang up, well, hang up the double bass and hang up my, I don't know, computer or whatever it is.

27:25One last question, if there is one. Yes. Hello. Thank you. That was, you said some really inspiring stuff. I was just wondering what advice you would give to young musicians who have the time, the passion and the talent but they quite haven't found their direction yet in the industry At what stage? So I have just finished a music degree, saxophone and clarinet and I love hip-hop, funk and soul but I'm finding it hard to find a solid direction of where to take it next