Ineza: Live at Alfie’s, Soho

The latest album from rising star Ineza is a simply entrancing celebration of this young woman’s life and experiences, using jazz to express herself both vocally and in the context of her quintet.

Ineza and her quintet

The album launch for Ibuka took place in the intimate setting of Alfie’s Jazz Club during the Soho Jazz Festival 2025: Ineza’s compositions were perfectly suited to a Friday night in the heart of Soho.

‘Ibuka’ is a Kinyarwanda word for ‘remember’ and each of these eight brilliant compositions take us with the singer as she harks back to her birth in Rwanda, subsequent adoption and life in Belgium, through to her home now in London.

Ineza’s story is fascinating, and she gave hints of it in explaining each of the tracks. Ibuka’s closing track, Kwibuka, recalls the 1994 genocide that devastated Rwanda shortly after the singer’s birth, her contribution to the 2024 commemoration. Performing it towards the end of the evening brought a real sense of hope and peace, with an evocation to explore the “beauty underneath all this pain”.

The sole love song on the album - Silence - was performed beautifully on the night. The singer says: “It’s the only love song on the album,but the album’s overall themes of loss, identity, and finding yourself can still be found. It’s about living with a complicated back story and finding it hard to express that to a partner.”

Additional compositions Ineza covered on the night include the Kenny Wheeler Everybody’s Song But My Own, with lyrics by the great Norma Winstone, and a stunning version of Afro Blue. The fine group of musicians on Ibuka also joined Ineza for the launch: Michael Lack (alto sax), Rob Brockway (piano), Ben Crane (double bass) and Kuba Miazga (drums). 

Her name, chosen by her biological mother, means ‘goodness’ in Kinyarwanda and Ineza says: “Something good came out of a bad situation.” Ineza talked fondly of her adoptive mother, Francine Declerq, and the moving Song For My Mother was dedicated to her. Ineza also mentioned contact with her birth mother and then the passing of Francine two years later. She says: “Learning the art of singing helped me immensely with learning to live without her. Ibuka is a love note to my adoptive mother, whom I loved very much—a meditation on memory, heritage, and the echoes of yesterdays.”

This album launch was an emotional event. I interviewed Ineza for Harmonious World earlier in the year to discuss her collaboration with Alex Webb and The Copasetics on Women’s Words, Sisters’ Stories, but I discovered a new side to her with this gig and the album itself. A couple approached me at the end of the night as they had seen me taking notes: they, too, were moved by Ineza and her songs. Visiting London from Barcelona, they told a similar story about memory, displacement and the overall sense of hope that the night had brought. The woman (she had told me her name, and I failed to write it down) explained that she was from Venezuela and Ineza’s stories about the beauty of Rwanda and the difficult history had resonated with them both. An emotional evening on so many levels and Ineza’s Ibuka will remain with me for some time.