I'd say at least as interesting as the late 60s scene with the SA and Jamaican musicians interacting with the locals
Today's London scene is less imitative than the 80s "Jazz revival" that I lived through here as a keen new Jazz listener, I agree.
The scene now is drawing from a deep well of musics from a number of diasporas and from the dance scene. It's the influence of those musics that make a minority decry the music made as "not Jazz enough", absolute nonsense. Just listen to Ezra Collective.
Interestingly tomorrow I'm off to see Nubya Garcia and the Nu Civilisation Orchestra play Getz's 'Focus'. So that's a major name of the scene looking backwards. I'm intrigued to hear what they make of it. The Nu Civilisation Orchestra has done a number of takes on classic albums recently.
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As for albums not being "classics" yet we'll give them a chance, even the most established artists are only on their second or third recording. I'd put a vote in for Theon Cross's 'Fyah' being an overlooked classic from the current batch, more so than the Kemet albums.
Halsall and Birchall are on about their tenth album each. They're consistent and I own most of them but wouldn't make a claim for any to be classics I don't think
I have lots of observations about the 80s scene with Pine, Loose Tubes, Sheppard etc but not really the time. What I would say is it was a lot smaller than the current scene, focussed on fewer artists and mostly in response to the Young Lions in the US (obviously not Loose Tubes who were from a long tradition of UK big bands, see Tippett et al). The scene was fun and had some very good players but didn't feel nearly as originally British or even London as the current crop do