By Gemma West
It’s 1971 and a woman in a sari walks down Frith Street, London. She’s headed for Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. She walks up to the door, stops in front of the bouncers, reaches into her purse and pulls out a gold membership. She smiles, and enters the club. The band begins to play. Her soul is restored.
Back at their home in Ham, West London, her husband watches over their two-year-old-son. The boy sleeps soundly. Help Me Make It Through the Night by John Holt was the lullaby his Dad played for him that night.
Fast forward to 2026. Now 56, Myn Jazeel fondly remembers those treasured times. In his home office in Surrey, these same memories are reflected. He is surrounded by the records and discs he has collected through the years. The walls are lined with achievements. ‘Congratulations, Myn, on one million sales’, says a framed Lauryn Hill album.
“Music is this incredible international language that transcends any barrier”
As a proud Sri Lankan man, growing up, his family wasn’t exactly traditional. “Mum and Dad were massively into music,” Myn says, “records were always playing around the house.”
Myn’s appearance today isn’t exactly stereotypical either. He’s bald with tattoos and perhaps a bit frightening. But he’s the exact opposite. He has genuine charm and resilience. He still loves listening through his parent’s jazz and blues collection. It’s clear they were strong influences on the way he lives his own life.
His parents emigrated from Sri Lanka to the UK separately when they were both young and on very different life paths. They met and fell in love. “They weren’t supposed to because of their class and ethnicity differences,” he says. “They fortunately had forward-thinking mothers who embraced it.”
It was music and dance that united them. There was an exhibition at St James’ Palace, Westminster, showcasing Sri Lankan Kandyan dancing. His Dad was playing bongos in the band. His Mum was one of the dancers.
Today, as a result of his upbringing, Myn is now co-founder and chair of Music Against Racism and co-chair of MOBO (Music Of Black Origin).
He does all this while managing three different music artists, all Black or South Asian. “I’m more attuned to what they’re trying to achieve and do,” he says.
He wasn’t always going to pursue a career in music, though. He loved learning jazz piano and hearing stories of Ronnie Scott’s, but at 18, he was a semi-professional footballer. The thing that put him off becoming one of the few South Asian players in the 80s? Institutionalised racism.
Myn made the decision to put his passion to one side and go to university. “Ironically,” he says, “one of my essays was on institutional racism in football. I spent plenty of time learning about it. It was hard to accept that I had no chance of becoming a footballer. It wouldn’t have mattered about my level of ability.
“Even today, the data shows there are only 1% of players in the English Premier League that are British South Asian. It’s a highly underrepresented group.”
After he graduated from Sussex University with a degree in International Relations, Myn’s Mum helped to set him up with a three-month internship at Entertainment UK, a music wholesaler and distributor. The music industry excited him more than international politics did. At first, the job felt daunting. He soon moved up the company with ease.
Myn was 21 when the internship started. He ended up staying for nine years. His time at Entertainment UK opened up a whole new world for him. “I didn’t know you could work in something you loved,” he says. “Maybe I didn’t realise at the time how big a moment it was for me.”
From there he was approached by Telstar Records, where he led a business creating concepts for TV-advertised compilation albums. Here he learnt how vital it was to build-up relationships with other artist teams and record labels.
This helped when, in 2007, Myn set up his own production company specialising in compilation albums. “I would create concepts for compilation albums and then use my relationships at record companies to deliver the whole package,” he says. “They trusted me and I would provide a track list, artwork, and TV commercial. It was a production company but also a consultancy.”
When Myn moved to Amazon Music in 2015, the whole industry had shifted. “Streaming came in and obliterated the compilation world amongst other things,” he says. Thankfully, Amazon was developing its own streaming platform and he grabbed the opportunity with both hands. “Everyone thought the industry was going to die,” he continues, “so you had to embrace it in order to survive.”
He overcame the new challenges that streaming brought, and in 2021, secured a new role at Warner Music as Senior Vice President of Rhino and EastWest Records. In his time at both Amazon and Warner, Myn became more aware of the wider political climate, in particular to the challenges around diversity, equity and inclusion in the music industry.
That was one of his main motivations for setting up Music Against Racism. “Music Against Racism is all about embracing the fact that passion for music can be used to combat racism,” Myn says.
“Music is this incredible international language that transcends any barrier. It can bond you with someone from a completely different background like nothing else can. Music can overcome all sorts of ignorance and stereotypes, which is what racism is rooted in, essentially.”
At Music Against Racism it’s not just about the music. It’s about educating people on racism and what can constitute it. “If you don’t speak up when you witness racism, for example, you’re essentially complicit, a passive bystander,” Myn says.
Myn’s love for music is more than just a passion. He is helping to change the music industry by harnessing the power of music in positive ways. “Music is so important,” he says, “it can be so critical in changing people’s views. And I love that. It gives me hope.”
When Myn was just a toddler, he had no idea of what his Sri Lankan parents had achieved by making a life for themselves in London.
But today he does. Today, Myn has a son, a stepdaughter and two grandchildren and he knows what needs to be done. “I want their society to be fair and equitable,” he says.
“There’s always a worry that the world is going the other way, particularly in today’s political climate. If I can make a difference to that in some way, then that makes me happy.”
