THE JAZZ CANNIBALS specialise in New Orleans jazz and Jimbino Vegan’s original songs, but their wide repertoire also includes Caribbean and Creole numbers, French chanson, musettes and waltzes, Russian and Eastern European pieces, chorinho, blues, and ragtime all played with their unique style and elegant, joyous and wacky sense of fun.

Due to their shared passion for old jazz they are very popular with the swing dance community and well known for their unique repertoire, exciting arrangements, skilful playing and distinctive performance style. JAZZ CANNIBAL shows are joyful occasions full of passionate playing and animated fun. They have been known to play encores lasting from between 10 minutes and 2 hours! Over the last 4 years JIMBINO VEGAN AND THE JAZZ CANNIBALS have been invited to play at many international swing dance, jazz, street, arts and theatre festivals throughout Europe. They usually string their big shows together with smaller gigs in bars, cafes, clubs, on the streets and community centres. They simply love performing and sharing their music with people of all ages and backgrounds and especially performing to folks who have never heard old authentic jazz or even acoustic music! Each year they usually spend between 2 and 3 months touring.

The birth of the Jazz Cannibals can’t really be pinpointed since the band is mostly made of friends who hung out having fun before starting playing music together. If you want to put a date and a place on it then maybe it would be 2011 in New Orleans. Jimbino lived there for 4 years working with several bands. To take a break from playing music, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon he would tootle over to Washington square with a ball and press gang all the drunks, traveller kids, drug dealers and lounging musicians for a pick-up soccer game. Joey and Bardi were visiting New Orleans with their band from Toulouse and while they were in town were regular attendees for the weekly pile ups around the goal mouth.

Jimbino moved back to Europe in 2015 setting up in Paris. He contacted Bardi and Joey and asked if they wanted to come on some short tours in Finland and the Baltic States where Jimbino used to live and work and where he has many friends and artistic contacts. He also invited his old buddy Stephen Scharmin from Belgium who he first met playing on the streets of Barcelona in 2004. After toying with several bass players Joey and Bardi introduced Jimbino to Pablo ‘Papa Chango’ Bouchard and things just got even better!

Alm and Jimbino may never have met if they had not been roughly the same height. In 2007 Jimbino was invited to play at Faces festival in Finland. During a handstand workshop at the festival the instructor told everyone to team up with someone the same height. From holding each others ancles their friendship slowly blossomed over the years into a close ideological bonding including music and beyond… to infibity! Due to having three children Alm is not so able to tour but whenever Stephen can’t make it, Alm comes along and brings his fantastic theatrical energy and his gentle but firm revolutionary political convictions to the show. Their friendship forms a major part of the philosophy behind the band and is one of the many reasons the band makes at least two annual tours to Finland. It was there that they chanced upon the one and only Tomi ‘Kettamin’ Kettunen, the Finnish virtuoso gypsy jazz guitarist. Tomi loved the silliness and fun of the Jazz Cannibals shows which was lacking in his regular serious gigs. Since Bardi is a passionate sailor and is sometimes unavailable due to crossing across the Atlantic or tootling around the Caribbean in a dinghy, Tomi has been a more regular fixture in the band recently. Other close friends, fun personalities and gifted artists like Bill Frampton, Tom Monahan and Sandra Lange have joined the group over the years and with better funding and more planning it would be great to expand to become a more than just a band – putting on variety shows with acts. But this is how they roll at the mo.