It’s an uncomfortable fact of the situation that some people have had a good pandemic. The rhythm of our daily lives has been disturbed, maybe forever, but for a lucky few that disturbance has been a boon. The type of person this applies to has: a steady job, the ability to work from home, an optimistic mindset and — most importantly — the kind of work ethic that was already pushing them to exhaustion, until the virus cancelled all plans. Cut to Jamz Supernova: the BBC Radio 1Xtra DJ whose Tuesday night show has been a lifeline during this year of remote listening and BYO vibes.
On the way to meet her (outdoors, at a distance), a flick through an old interview reveals that most of her answers are littered with exclamation marks (mental note: must cut down). So the afternoon looks set to be jolly — a pleasant back-and-forth in the hands of a permanently enthused radio pro. But you don’t get to be a BBC radio DJ, label boss, podcast host, voiceover artist, TV presenter and A&R scout — all by the age of 30 — on enthusiasm alone. Positive vibes don’t pay the bills. There’s steel behind this smile.
Born Jamilla Walters, raised in south London, and named by a chance encounter with a space encyclopaedia, Jamz Supernova is one of those terminally busy people for whom lockdown has meant a well-earned rest. Previously, on any given week, she might have been recording a voiceover, scouting new talent for Sony RCA or performing in Cape Town or Tbilisi.
As a DJ she moves fluidly between dancefloor riddims like kuduro, dancehall and UK funky, and radio-friendly electronic soul: broken beat, jazzy house and psychedelic hip-hop. Her record label Future Bounce straddles both, home to the nocturnal glow of singer-producer Sola as well as the pounding funk mutations of Bamz.
On 1Xtra, Jamz represents that modern strain of R&B often awkwardly described as “future” or “alternative”, with voices like NoName, Nubya Garcia and serpentwithfeet slotting into an offbeat lineage going back through Odd Future, The Neptunes and Erykah Badu. Her working rhythm is set by the show, which has gone out week after week during one of the hardest years in memory, including a special three-hour show at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in June.
“I always found comfort in the radio,” says Jamz, revealing a voice slightly less mellow and languorous than the one most people know. “Instinctively, I wake up and put the radio on. If I leave my dog alone I’m gonna put on the radio for him.”
At the start of the pandemic, she was sent some mics so she could pre-record the show at home. These days, as so many workplaces adjust to the long-term reality of COVID-19, she gets a cab to the studio once a week, recording in an empty room with her producer on the other side of the glass. She’s not really alone, of course, because out there somewhere are her listeners. Who are they? “I know I have a lot of actual artists listening,” she says. “But I think who I’m talking to is a mirror of me, someone who’s on a quest to find this music.”
We meet in Crystal Palace Park, not far from the patch of south-east London where Jamz grew up and close to her alma maters: the BRIT School, a bus ride away in Croydon, and Reprezent, the Brixton community radio station where she first learned the ropes alongside DJs like SHERELLE and Neptizzle. Travel has become a rare luxury, but it’s still weird to be excited about going to Penge, a place mostly associated with falling asleep on the night bus.
Jamz bounds up to the gate with her dog, a one-year-old cavapoo called Ché. He leads us on the hunt for squirrels and dogs and remote-control cars, and the famous Crystal Palace dinosaurs — the first-ever full- scale replicas of the extinct animals, installed in the 1850s. Jamz must’ve been round this park hundreds of times in the past year.
Lockdown suits her fine: she’s been busy with the label (11 releases in 11 months), learning new dishes (lentil jerk bolognese), bingeing TV shows (Harlots, It’s A Sin), and working out (“I’m never going to the gym again,” she swears). The only hard part is “the monotony. What’s the difference between Friday and weekend?”