Brexit, borders, and negotiations of jazz musicians in London

Jazz is a genre that relies on live performances and transnational touring. Brexit—Britain leaving the European Union in January 2021—was expected to have an impact on the British jazz musicians’ movement and international work. The political decisions seemed to take Britain back to an era before the freedom of movement. While the direct impact of Brexit was further complicated and hidden by the COVID-19 epidemic, British jazz musicians were already preparing for the upcoming difficulties during the transition period in 2020. Through this article, I observe how jazz musicians in and around London were preparing for the upcoming changes and how they expected to be hindered by the new context. Through a discussion of virtual interviews undertaken between spring 2020 and spring 2021, it is evident that musicians were expecting Brexit to affect the scenes in London and were constructing strategies on how they could belong to groups on both sides of the new border that Brexit was to bring. In the analysis, when utilizing Kantola et al.’s (2022) theory of social bubbles, it becomes evident how jazz musicians have been divided into separate local, national and international bubbles. My hypothesis in this article is that the three social bubbles exist side-by-side and overlap one another. The bubbles enable the international elite musicians to move freely between these different bubbles as they have access to all of them. The musicians restricted into the local or national bubbles, however, have fewer opportunities. In this article I will also explore how British jazz musicians construct in their interviews discussions in relation to borders and border crossing

Brexit · Elite · European union · Jazz · Negotiation · Politics · Diverse Musicological Studies · Music History and Culture · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts