Ezra Collective - Here Because of Hope Tour

Ezra Collective

Here Because of Hope Tour

Presented by Emerged Agency
February 19, 2027 Cologne, Carlswerk Victoria
Doors open: 7:00 p.m. | Show starts: 8:00 p.m.

“Here Because of Hope” by Ezra Collective is the most ambitious and personal album of their career —conceived as a complete work divided into three spiritual and geographical movements, the album traces the journey of Black people across continents and decades, from the music of Africa to the rhythms of the Caribbean to the streets of London. Formed in the youth clubs of London, Mercury Prize and BRIT Award winners Femi Koleoso, TJ Koleoso, Joe Armon-Jones, James Mollison, and Ife Ogunjobi have now spent over a decade making jazz joyful, compelling, and irresistible. On “Here Because Of Hope,” they take this vision further than ever before and pose a simple yet profound question: Why does so much Black music, born of pain, sound so joyful? Their answer is hope: the belief, carried across generations and oceans, that something better is possible. Drawing on collaborations with Pa Salieu, Lila Iké, Leona Lewis, and with an eye toward the entire spectrum of the global African diaspora (including the Americas, where these very African and Caribbean roots gave birth to jazz itself), “Here Because Of Hope” is an album of remarkable warmth, ambition, and humanity—and the sound of Britain’s most vibrant band at the height of its creative powers.

The lead single “Only Love” is the perfect introduction to the world of “Here Because Of Hope.” The song begins with a solitary trumpet melody that sounds like a signal sent into the sky across generations, continents, and genres, before settling into a groove that is typical of the Ezra Collective: jazz and hip-hop fusing into something immediate and irresistible.

Featuring British-Gambian rapper Pa Salieu, whose verse serves as a masterclass on the album’s central theme. He navigates poverty, incarceration, and grief (“People I love are dying while I’m locked up in a cage”) with the unshakable honesty of someone who has lived through every word himself, before arriving at the only conclusion that gives meaning to it all: “It’s just love deep in my soul.” This is the distilled expression of what this album is truly about—the idea that hope isn’t naive, but rather what you find on the other side of it all.