Music is constantly rootling around in the past for sounds and styles that might appear novel when given a quick makeover and transposed to the present. Even so, it comes as quite a surprise to discover that one of this month's key musical trends is the revival of the brass band ensemble, with the recent release of Sousamaphone by Mancunian "peace-lovin' aggro-jazz" outfit the Riot Jazz Brass Band, soon to be followed by albums from Wisconsin's Youngblood Brass Band and the Hackney Colliery Band, on which hip-hop beats, funk and jazz collide with a tonne of trombones.
The current surge of interest in this sound probably began in 2007, when Robert Luis, a DJ and label owner in Brighton, started playing the now famous cover of Sexual Healing by New Orleans' Hot 8 Brass Band. "There would literally be queues of people asking me what the track was," he says. "No amount of hype, PR or twerking can buy that kind of real and heartfelt dancefloor reaction for a track." Luis promptly signed Hot 8 to his Tru Thoughts label, closely followed by Youngblood Brass Band.
Maybe British ears are already predisposed towards brass band music. Bennie Pete of Hot 8, whose music is all about the rowdiness and tragedy of New Orleans's housing projects, says: "The UK has its own tradition of brass bands, and I think they hear what we are saying on our horns." Not for nothing do TV programmers look to the bandstand when they want to stir our patriotic or nostalgic spirits. Traditional colliery brass bands have always served a community bonding function in this country, not least during the miners' strike – a spirit that was tapped into by the artist Jeremy Deller with his brilliant Acid Brass project covering rave-era classics such as The KLF's What Time Is Love.
Confirming the connection between old and new school brass bands, Steve Pretty of the Hackney Colliery Band recalls playing to a theatre audience of OAPs who were expecting a traditional-style affair, "A guy who must have been at least 85 took off his shirt and started swinging it around his head during one of our rave-inspired encores. It was such a shame when his wife tapped him on the shoulder and said 'No, Gerald'." Whether the parp of the tubas and the cornets really is tapping into something atavistic in the British spirit, or whether, as David Henzie-Skogen of Youngblood suggests, it's a more simple, universal thrill of hearing "music made via the human power of breath and hands, that one feels in the gut", this is music with physical heft in an era of laptop twiddling. It would take a hard heart indeed to watch one of these troupes playing live and not want to join the parade.
Riot Jazz's Sousamaphone! is out now; Youngblood's Pax Volumi is out Mon; Hackney Colliery Band's Common Decency is out 23 Sep
