Jamz Supernova is one of the UK's most influential tastemakers, and now she is set to add hosting the Music Week Awards to her long list of career highlights. From her early days interning at BBC Radio 1Xtra, to her current roles as presenter on 6 Music, running her own Future Bounce label, hosting her podcast Between The Lines and being an in-demand DJ, she has continuously pushed the boundaries and shone a light on emerging and underground artists. On May 8, the 2023 Music Week Women In Music Awards Music Champion is taking centre stage as the host of the Music Week Awards 2025. Ahead of the big night, we meet the trailblazer for a discussion that takes in the grassroots circuit, club culture and why being an expert isn’t always the key to success…
WORDS: MIRANDA BARDSLEY
PHOTOS: ALEX LAMBERT
“What’s good is I’ve been on both sides – I'm the host now, but I’ve been at the table many times wanting to win, I know that feeling,” Jamz Supernova laughs, as she settles down for a chat with Music Week ahead of this year's Music Week Awards. “So my job is just to celebrate people and keep it moving! I’m excited.”
A pioneering force in the UK’s music scene, Jamz Supernova has spent the last decade building her reputation as one of the country’s leading tastemakers. These days, she’s best known for her weekly Saturday slot on BBC Radio 6 Music, where she curates and showcases a diverse range of emerging talent and genres from across the globe. From broken beats to electronica, Jamz highlights the subcultures that are still flying under mainstream radar.
“I’m always on a journey to find new music,” she explains. “That’s what I always strive to do; the person that’s on the radio or doing an interview or who you bump into at Glastonbury? That’s all the same person – it’s me being my whole self, someone who is just really curious.”
Her journey started at the age of 19 when she enrolled at BRIT FM, not too long before joining the BBC as a producer. After spending time at Reprezent Radio, Jamz made her mark as a radio host for the first time at age 24, at BBC 1Xtra. She went onto become an early champion of artists like Hak Baker, Ezra Collective and Greentea Peng, and has since become a household name on UK radio.
But that’s not all. Far from it.
In 2018, Jamz launched her own label Future Bounce – “an expression of my own taste and an incubator for new talent” – where she works in both an A&R and consulting capacity. Working with artists like Hagan, Sola and Giulia Tess, to name just a few, the label forms another part of the trailblazer’s mission to support new artists and help them break into the industry.
Jamz’s DJ sets are another arena where she continues to experiment and spotlight a range of acts – keeping her finger on the pulse of cutting-edge and influential sounds at all times. Known for mixing broken beat, UK funky, techno, bass, and much more, she’s a mainstay on the UK festival circuit, playing sets at the likes of Glastonbury, We Out Here festival and All Points East.
“I’m loving what I’m seeing in club culture at the moment," she tells Music Week. “Things are tough but there are people being really innovative. For example, people are really stripping things down, and asking things like, ‘What if there was a no phone policy on the dance floor? What if you didn’t know the line-up before an event?’ – it's all about playing with what’s mainstream and building an underground culture.”
In 2024, Jamz also began Between The Lines, a podcast focused on the art of songwriting, in which she has hosted candid, open discussions with artists like Yazmin Lacey, Hak Baker and English Teacher’s Lily Fontaine that explore the stories behind their music.
“I listen to so many podcasts, I like how they’re changing the types of conversations that are happening right now,” she says. “And Between The Lines allows me to have vulnerable conversations with artists – it’s not like one side of the desk and they’re at the other, we’re in a studio set up like a sitting room and the artists know what they’re coming into.”
Through everything Jamz does, from radio to DJ sets, her label to her podcast, one thing remains constant: her deep love for music.
“That’s where it all begins, and that feeds everything else,” she smiles. “Like what I play in my DJ sets, or the artists I want to have on my podcast... it comes back to that.”
And with that, we dive into a discussion of what Jamz is most excited about the industry right now, talking club culture, the grassroots, and a particular story about rhythms from Madagascar that caught her interest…
First of all, we're getting closer to the big day. How are you feeling about hosting the Music Week Awards?
“I’m excited, but also a little nervous! It’s a big challenge, and I’ve always admired hosts of award shows because I feel like they unfairly get a lot of scrutiny – like you must be funny or you must be engaging. But the key is, you have to be yourself, whether that’s quirky, sarcastic, humorous, whatever it is, you have to embrace it. As a host, I will be warm, friendly, like you hear on my Saturday show.”
Your show is also on the shortlist this year, congratulations! What do you think your listeners love about it?
“I try not to be too aware of it in that way – like, ‘People listen to me because of this or because of that…’ But what I’ve been told is, it’s just the genuine enthusiasm that I have for music and being able to share that in a way that feels to people like I’m talking to them and sharing [the music] with them in an intimate way. I’m not coming on the air on Saturdays saying, ‘I’m an expert in this area,’ – that can make beautiful radio, but for me, I'm saying, ‘I just found this, have a listen, what do you think?’ That sort of thing. We all have different things that we look for in presenters, and that’s what I bring.”
6 Music is also nominated this year. In your opinion, what makes the station unique?
“I can’t stress how much I love being on 6. I love the audience, I love being there, I just remember Gilles [Peterson] saying to me once, ‘Aren’t we so lucky?’ And I genuinely really feel like we are. What the station is doing really well at is that it teaches us about co-existence, you can have multiple scenes existing at the same time. All the different presenters on 6 represent different parts of the industry – they’re not going to all be for you, and that’s okay, so what we have is a wide range of listeners, including me! There’s such a cross section of people at different levels as well, you’ve got your big legends, household names, as well as newer, more obscure names. It’s just great programming, and we’re given the freedom to create – I don’t take that for granted. Being trusted, given feedback and knowing you're part of a team, you never feel like anyone is less important than anyone else, everyone has a role to play and the team is tight.”
The Music Week Awards is all about celebrating the past year in music – what is exciting you most about the industry right now?
“I’m really excited about the stories that people are telling through their music. I don’t think it’s a new trend, but like with compilations, they are having a great moment. People have always said that compilations can’t work in the streaming era, but when you’re telling an incredible story or a forgotten timeline through them, they’re so powerful. Also, I just interviewed an artist called Salin, who calls herself a ‘Thai funky drummer in the Western world’, and she’s also a composer. She was telling me about her theory that there was a particular tribe from Thailand that travelled across the sea to Africa, and brought back rhythms from Madagascar – her whole idea was just asking, ‘What if? What if that happened?' It could’ve, it’s plausible, and there are things to back her up – she’s gone on this deep dive!
“Also, we’re out of the pandemic and we’re facing a whole new set of challenges right now, but I feel like people are really wanting to connect with each other on the ground. There is only so much that the internet can do, and the kinds of in real life relationships are coming back to the forefront.”
Talking of seeking in-person connection, that is something you are focused on in your podcast Between The Lines. What do you think the podcast offers that social media, where artists are seemingly constantly accessible, doesn't?
“Longer conversations leave room for nuance, which you don’t get in a 60 second video – those short videos are so edited and they are all about getting the hook in and cutting to the point as quickly as possible. On my podcast, the conversations can get really vulnerable and there’s also a sense of spontaneity because I’m not just like, ‘Tell me all your trauma and let me sit on the couch and nod,’ it’s all about us both sharing. I have a really personal moment in season three with Greentea Peng where I get caught off guard, and I start crying! It’s something about sitting face-to-face, us looking at each other, not at the camera, that adds a whole layer to it.”
Last time we spoke, you were talking about the need for more focus on long-term artist development. Are you seeing enough attention being paid to that industry-wide?
“I’m always looking at the industry from an analytical standpoint, because I’m fascinated by how things work. One thing I have noticed is that a lot of the majors have signed relatively new artists who are about 18 months off from releasing stuff, so I’m really intrigued to see the development that will happen with them. There’s definitely been positive change, but my worry is that we will roll back on diversity across the board; we should be thinking about the artists, the people working in their teams – that’s when you get the best results.
“On my label, Future Bounce, we do a club series every couple of years, and the last series was a mini version of it – in part because of money [laughs] but also because I wanted to focus on six artists rather than 12. I really wanted it to be as diverse as it could be and I wanted it to be emerging artists, so we could give them stability and a base level support on how to get their music out there. I also knew I wanted it to be Black and Brown focused. We ended up with two male-identifying artists, two non-binary artists and two female-identifying; two artists were South Asian, one artist was East Asian and two artists identified as Black or mixed Black. And that’s just how it happened, I was aware while we were going, but I wasn’t seeking it out. At the end of it I just thought, ‘Wow, this feels like great progress.’ It’s our best work to this day, and that can come from just trying a bit harder, on all levels.”
Do you think the music business is doing enough to increase representation and accessibility into it?
“This year, specifically, I haven’t really been in the industry, the mechanisms of it, I’ve been on the ground, in it with the people, and I think seeing it from that side of things has been really good. Going to places like Brazil has been really informative for me to see a whole other way that music lives in people’s lives. But I would like to think that there are still conversations and schemes happening, and we have to keep moving past call outs and towards positive action. I’ve definitely noticed that on smaller levels – especially in the club world. I’m on this event called No Edits, and there’s four labels that run it – mine, Future Bounce, my partner’s label More Time Records, Scuffed Recordings and Hooversound with Sherelle and Naina. We do a monthly event at [London's] Carpet Shop, it’s all free, and we do demo playbacks – so anyone can come and play their music – we have panels, talks and workshops. Seeing that community slowly grow, with the same people coming and new people too, you just don’t know what that’s going to go on to become.
“Sherelle also has her Beautiful project which offers studio sessions. My partner is doing another year of [artist development programme] Next Level, and where I live, there’s a youth club where the kids pay 50p and they can do rock climbing, DJing and boxing! I see it all around me, the small joys. We just have to keep shouting and fighting for progress too.”
As someone who is active in the independent scene, what is your take on the grassroots crisis at the moment? Is the industry taking enough action to support indie venues?
“We’re in an interesting time. The grassroots are doing so much, and the publicity side is great, we need to keep talking about it, but we really need action from high up, that is so important. I love what [DJ and producer] Mr Scruff has been doing, where he’s saying, ‘I’m not an arena artist, but I can still do a £1 levy.’ And I think we can all do it. Ultimately, we shouldn’t stop the good things that we’re doing on a small, micro, grassroots level, but we have to start looking from the top down. As a society, we’re talking about capitalism in general… these wider conversations are part of our psyches now, but it still has to all come from the top down. And if we don’t galvanise together and talk about it, and if platforms don’t use their platforms to talk about it, then people won’t know it’s happening until it’s too late.”
Finally, what is it that drives you the most in your career?
“I always have to check what my measure of success is and what my ambitions are. It’s really important for me to keep coming back to this question: why am I doing what I’m doing? It’s really just because I love music, I love talking about it, playing it, sharing it and finding it. And I have to always carve out time for that, and not get too busy or jaded with everything else that comes with it. I have to have enough time to plan my radio show, to be able to sit all day, uninterrupted, online, going on a deep dive to find great music, and 300 songs later I have two shows. But it always starts with spending that time looking for music – I’ve done that since I was a kid.”
