Jazz, soul & blues
Jamiroquai
Jamiroquai, the British funk and acid-jazz band led by singer Jay Kay, was one of the great successes of the 1990s, with hits such as “Virtual Insanity”, “Cosmic Girl” and “Canned Heat”. The band took the stage of the Montreux Jazz Festival several times, from their debut in 1995 to a headline slot in 2018, by way of the 2003 concert that became a cult DVD.
Jamiroquai, the funk of Jay Kay in Montreux
The acid-jazz groove of the 1990s
Formed in London in 1992 around Jay Kay, recognisable by his extravagant hats, Jamiroquai imposed a modern funk tinged with disco and acid jazz. With four number-one albums in the United Kingdom and the worldwide success of “Virtual Insanity”, the band became one of the most popular of its generation.
From Space Cowboy to “Live at Montreux”
Jamiroquai discovered the Auditorium Stravinski on 12 July 1995, in the middle of the “Return of the Space Cowboy” tour. The band was only three years old, but its dancing funk and Jay Kay’s hatted silhouette already stood out on the festival’s main stage.
On 16 July 2003 they came back for a set of more than two hours, all groove and movement, between hits and album tracks. The cameras rolled: this concert became “Jamiroquai – Live at Montreux 2003”, released on DVD by Eagle Vision in 2007 and long one of the band’s most-watched live documents — with, as a bonus, a “Space Cowboy” taken from the 1995 evening.
Fifteen years later, Jamiroquai closed the loop: the band was one of the headliners of the 52nd edition, which ended on 14 July 2018, carried by its album “Automaton”. From the 1995 breakthrough to the 2018 return, Montreux accompanied the whole journey of Jay Kay’s crew.