Not marching to a different drum

"We're a testament to music being universal, the individual and collective expression of our experience in this world," declared the Swiss-based Panamaborn Billy Cobham before introducing his Finnish keyboarder Lukas Woltina, German bass-guitarist Stefan Rademacher, French guitarist Jean-Marie Ecay, Brazilian percussionist Marco Lobo and Anglo-Caribbean steel-pan soloist Junior Gill.

Given the extreme diversity of this band, their music sounded depressingly homogenous. The distinctive colours of reggae and samba were soon drowned by that plonking jazz-funk backbeat that lulls us into a soporific state at fashion boutiques, airport lounges and telephone switchboards.

Nobody could win, though each player tried hard to make his mark. Rademacher, on five-string bass, and Woltina, on piano and synth, displayed impressive versatility, Ecay's casual mastery of rock timbre-kept his solos on the brink of feedback without ever going over the top, and Lobo demonstrated the nervous energy of a young Airto Moreira.

Cobham himself was more democratic than usual. No longer hidden behind a thicket of cymbals and mercifully past the age of 20-minute drum solos, he did enough to placate the "C'mon Bill!" drum-heads in the crowd, but the blazing heartbeat of group commitment wasn't there.

World-jazz is a fine-sounding concept, but I fear that when all individual streams have gone and everybody is swinging to the same beat, something precious will have been lost.

Until tomorrow (020 7439-0747)

Billy Cobham Band, The Ronnie Scotts All Stars
Ronnie Scott's
Frith Street, W1D 4HT