While bassist Gary Crosby’s band owe their origins to the Alpha School generation of top Jamaican jazz talent exported all over the world particularly to the UK, and veteran Jamaican musicians the likes of Rico Rodriguez and Eddie “Tan Tan” Thornton that Crosby assembled during the band’s early life in the 1990s, a new mostly homegrown generation of musicians has kept the flame alive within Jazz Jamaica’s ranks ever since. Crosby remains as Jazz Jamaica’s guiding light and driving inspiration.

Opening deep in Skatalites territory with ‘Guns of Navarone’ Jazz Jamaica are ready for a busy 2012 which, as Crosby told the lively audience, marks 50 years of Jamaica’s independence. This relatively new version of the group is well primed certainly on this showing to return to heartland blue beat, ska, lovers rock and soul jazz with some new latin-based material in prototype mode also entering the band book and a good version of Cape Verdean tinged hard bop in the great Horace Silver’s ‘Señor Blues.’

Hideaway voted venue of the year at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards this year was well equipped to deal with a band that needed little introduction to the club. Last year’s equivalent gig, the venue’s director Fran Strachan explained as Jazz Jamaica were building up a head of steam on the stage behind her, was hit by snow and some “100 people were forced to cancel”. No such weather intervention this time and the supper club venue, which also hosts popular comedy nights, and has increased in size since the summer, was nicely full. January will also see the opening of a sister café around the corner on Streatham High Road, on the site of a 1960s Streatham jazz club.

Familiar Jazz Jamaica faces such as saxophonist Denys Baptiste, guitarist Robin Banerjee, trombonist Harry Brown impressive as ever, percussionist Pete Eckford and drummer Rod Youngs with Crosby on particularly fine form were joined by relative newcomers, trumpeter Mark Crown, pianist Ben Burrell, and alto sax playerCamilla George on the Hideaway stage. ‘Double Barrel', went down very well, but it was Desmond Dekker’s ‘Israelites’ that got large sections of the middle of the room moving, and breakout dancing developed fanning out from the tables where people had earlier eaten supper.

As well as the instrumentalists upcoming south London singer Keisha Downie joined for several numbers. Wearing a white dress with a strong lovers rock voice and on jazzier runs a slight touch of Dianne Reeves about her, she almost stole the show with her assured version of ‘My Boy Lollipop’ towards the end, the Millie hit that ushered in bluebeat and reggae flavours to the UK in 1964. Banerjee, Beckford, Youngs, Crosby and Burrell kept up a mighty rhythm throughout and sometimes with Banerjee (most obviously on ‘Surfin’’) it was reminiscent of Crosby’s uncle the inspirational Ernest Ranglin who sometimes appears with the band. Jason Yarde jumped up from the audience later in the two-hour set to guest with some gutsy crab-like alto sax improvising that clearly spurred on the other front line players and earned huge smiles from Camilla George standing alongside whose own soulful riffing is coming on all the time. Jazz Jamaica didn’t forget the seasonal touches and when Keisha Downie came back at the end Christmas certainly came early in Streatham this year. – Stephen Graham

And the impassioned sound of the tenor saxophonist with St Lucian parents, Denys Baptiste, whose fourth album Identity By Abstraction is a telling statement indeed. Baptiste was born in Hounslow in 1959 and his father's record collection, which included albums by Basie and Mingus, propelled him towards jazz. He had his first saxophone lessons as a 14-year-old, while hearing the sounds of the west London Caribbean community all around him. He studied music for two years at the West London Institute before signing on for a course in jazz at the Guildhall School of Music. He played with his mentor Gary Crosby and his Nu Troop in the '90s before cutting his first album Be Where you Are in 1999, followed by Alternating Currents in 2001. In 2003 Let Freedom Ring commemorated the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's epochal Washington speech. It was a contender for Best Album and Best New Work in the BBC Jazz Awards.

Baptiste has with him some impressive musical confreres in Identity By Subtraction. Crosby joins him on bass, adding his long-serving Anglo-Caribbean heartbeat to Baptiste's own diasporan sound. The pianist is Andrew McCormick, another west London boy and alumnus of Pimlico School, a white Englishman with a deep Caribbean empathy who regularly accompanies other saxophonists of Antillean roots like Jason Yarde and Jean Toussaint. The drummer is Rod Youngs. Baptiste desribes his album as a "collage of thoughts and improvisations" and the title tune includes a rocking chorus by McCormick with Crosby's walking bass and and Baptiste pouring out his soundscapes with a weaving beauty. The second track, Apprehension, exresses the moments before and during the act of creating music, of pathmaking through notes and Baptiste's solo is ripe with nervous excitation. Dance of the Maquiritari was born after Baptiste learned from his mother that her grandparents were descendants of Amerindian peoples of the shores of the Orinico River in Venezuela. It has a south American groove heightened by Youngs's lively and jumping drums, while its successor Special Times has another family dedication to Baptiste's wife and children. His soprano radiates intimacy and melodic love. Evolution From Revolution charts the story of the Caribbean people in Britain since the arrivant experiences of the post-war Windrush generation, through the resistance of the 1970s and the continuing struggles of now-times.

Baptiste plays like a musical riot, each note spilling out the lives of his people, as he compounds a sound-chronicle, with Crosby's ever-present bass marking down the years. Another Caribbean bass doyen, the veteran Coleridge Goode, who played beside fellow-Jamaican Harriott is the hero of Harriotts Charriott - A Life in the Bass Line. Goode recounts his life and musical ideas over Baptiste's swinging orn with a moving eloquence. Song For You is a previously unrecorded tune by the late South African pianist Bheki Mseuluki, with whom Baptiste toured 20 years ago. Full of life and African free spirit, it uplifts the musicians, has their notes running across the Veldtlands. And there is more history in The Long Night, which marks the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. The horn-chronicler Baptiste tells the story with the sound of truth, passion, the blues and final redemption.

It was a blistering, late night performance of Steve Williamson’s That Fuss Was Us, at Gold in Tokyo, that was instrumental in getting the hard core Japanese Jazz establishment to take the nu-generation of UK based jazz warriors seriously. Basically, the senior editor of Japan’s most prestigious jazz journal described their performance at Gold as the most thrilling session he’d seen since witnessing the debut of Miles Davis’ electric band.

A crucial member of the Jazz Warriors in the mid 1980s, Steve Williamson record three superlative solo albums, ‘Waltz For Grace’, ‘Rhyme Time [That Fuss Was Us]’ and ‘Journey To Truth’. Each of these albums is endowed with an abundance of challenging compositional ideas and an approach to rhythm that reflects Steve’s affinity to Hip Hop and the NYC M-Base movement as well as his passion for African music and his own Jamaican heritage.

However, life is never simple and some it takes a toll more than others. As such, Steve has had a tendency to vanish off the radar and though it seemed a little weird at first, the news that Gary Crosby’s Tomorrow’s Warriors Jazz Orchestra is set to celebrate the music of Steve at the RFH has to be cause for celebration.

“For me… and anyone around the Jazz Warriors… we accepted he was the one! We knew he was a genius.” declares Gary Crosby – bassist and artistic director of Tomorrow’s Warriors – and it’s his commitment to Williamson as a pivotal figure in the evolution of the UK jazz scene that has led him to stage the South Bank performance.

“This performance is the first in a series celebrating great British jazz musicians. The Tomorrow’s Warriors Orchestra, is made up of young players like Peter Edwards, James Mackay and Binku Golding alongside experienced players like Denys Baptiste and Kevin Robinson. Myrna Hague is coming in from JA to sing ‘Waltz For Grace’. Interpreting Steve’s compositions is definitely a challenge and for this performance we will mostly take tracks from ‘Waltz For Grace’ plus one or two from the second album. Steve is a daring musician and these are adventurous charts for such a large ensemble.”

Apparently, Steve has dropped into the rehearsals a couple of times to have a listen. He gets on with “the juniors”, making the connections and delivering the word on what they need to know. Hopefully, the saxophonist will be present at the pre-concert conversation hosted by journalist/broadcaster Kevin Legendre. It will discuss the impact of Steve Williamson’s music and its relevance as a soundtrack to the late Eighties and Early Nineties.

I last saw Steve play in November 2009, during the London Jazz Festival. It was a small but packed gig at Charlie Wrights in Hoxton. It was a largely improvised set and Steve, who featured on tenor and soprano, was joined by UK avante garde stalwarts Roger Turner on drums , Pat Thomas on keys & electronics and by NYC based trumpeter Roy Campbell who has collaborated with David Murray, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor and John Zorn. It was thrilling and exhilarating session that once more confirmed Steve as a fierce talent and I for one will be at the South Bank to check this ambitious tribute which aims to link generations and shine a light on a serious artist who has slipped into the shadows.