Bluey Maunick's London band and its ever-changing voices

Incognito is the work of one guitarist's long vision. The British band, based in London, was founded in 1979 by Paul “Tubbs” Williams and Jean-Paul “Bluey” Maunick as an offshoot of Light of the World, a large group whose founding members had by then formed their own offshoot, Beggar & Co. The model was American: funk bands such as Funkadelic spun off bands such as Parliament. Incognito's debut album, Jazz Funk, followed in 1981.

Maunick is the frontman, singer, guitarist, composer and record producer, and around him the vocal line-up keeps turning over. The singers who have worked with the band include Linda Muriel, Jocelyn Brown, Maysa Leak, Tony Momrelle, Vanessa Haynes, Carleen Anderson, Kelli Sae and Joy Malcolm. It is a band defined less by a fixed line-up than by a way of doing things: a core writer and a succession of voices.

Success in the UK singles chart came in bursts. The breakthrough was a 1991 cover of Ronnie Laws's “Always There”, featuring Jocelyn Brown, which reached number 6. In 1992 their rendition of “Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing” reached number 19. Remixers have always liked them: Masters at Work, David Morales, Roger Sanchez and Jazzanova have all worked on their music, and the band has released several albums made almost entirely of remixes.

They have also lent their name to causes. In 1994 they appeared on Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool, a compilation to raise awareness and funds in the AIDS epidemic in the African-American community, which Time magazine named album of the year; in 1996 they contributed “Water to Drink” to Red Hot + Rio. Their song “Need to Know” is the theme of the news programme Democracy Now!. In 2021 came a 106-track 40th-anniversary retrospective of Jazz Funk, with a 52-page booklet, and in October 2022 Incognito were the first group honoured in Universal Music's Black Story series for Black British artists.