*Only Friday tickets available in limited numbers.
The Mostly Jazz Funk and Soul Festival lineup is in and boy is it a belter. How the organisers manage to trump the previous year’s lineup on a consistently annual basis is nothing short of astonishing but every year they manage to pull a new legend out of a very deep musical hat. The big name surprise for 2017 is Chaka Khan. They don’t come much bigger than the Queen of Funk, Yvette Marie Stevens. 70 million record sales and 10 grammy awards for starters. We’d be getting weekend tickets on the strength of just this one announcement but of course this is a festival with a reputation for incredibly strong bills. Jazzie B will be dragging along the Soul II Soul crew for a co-headlining slot with the Birmingham based (no not our fair city the other one) soul legends St. Paul and the Broken Bones. Go and feast your eyes on who else is appearing and prepare to have a musical synapse meltdown. Far too many to list here but can we just say we’re beside ourselves with excitement at the return of hip hop smoothies The Pharcyde. Weekend tickets always sell out. They go on sale Fri 3 Mar at noon, we’ll have ours printed off and ready at one minute past.

Fri 7 July to Sun 9 July at Moseley Park, Alcester Road, Birmingham B13 8DD £99 weekend £45 day mostlyjazz.co.uk