A ruined demo turned Jay Kay into a bandleader

Before Jamiroquai existed, Jay Kay was mailing songs to record companies, one of them a hip-hop single issued in 1986. The turning point was a quarrel. He had written “When You Gonna Learn” about social issues, shaped by his interest in Native American philosophies, but his producer cut half the lyrics and bent the track toward whatever was charting. With the song restored to his own version, Kay realised he wanted a proper live band with a proper live sound.

The name fused “jam” with a slightly altered Iroquois, the Native American confederacy, a choice Native American journalists later criticised as misappropriation. Kay signed to Acid Jazz Records in 1991 after sending a demo of himself covering a Brand New Heavies song, then gathered players: Wallis Buchanan on didgeridoo, keyboardist Toby Smith as songwriting partner, and bassist Stuart Zender, who won his place by audition. In 1992 they began in the London club scene, and the first single missed the UK Top 50.

Major labels called anyway. Kay signed an eight-album deal with Sony worth a million dollars. He was the only member under contract, yet he agreed to share royalties with the band according to what each person contributed. The debut, Emergency on Planet Earth, entered at the top of the UK albums chart, and Synkronized and A Funk Odyssey would later do the same, while “Deeper Underground” gave them a UK number one single.

The third album, Travelling Without Moving, earned a Guinness World Record as the best-selling funk album in history, helped by the video for “Virtual Insanity”, named Video of the Year at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards. Only the Spice Girls and Oasis outsold them among British acts of the 1990s. The sound stretched from acid jazz into rock, disco, electronic and Latin music, and the lyrics kept returning to social and environmental justice. Through every line-up change Kay stayed the one constant, and songs like “Seven Days in Sunny June” carry the groove he set out to build.