African folk tales of slavery and lost powers of flight sent Camilla George to sleep as a child in Nigeria. An enflamed imagination and restless nights must have followed, judging by spiritual jazz lullaby ‘Little Eight John’, in which Cherise Adams-Burnett warns of “raw head and bloody nose” from whatever awaits wakeful children in the unknown dark. George's second album explores her nostalgic memories of these slavery-steeped stories. Leading a band of peers in London's new jazz scene, her alto playing is so sunnily optimistic that the shackles fall from her subjects, even before ‘The People Could Fly’ recalls myths of former freedom. Rattled chains introduce the sourer, knowing tone of George's slow blues on ‘The Most Useful Slave’, followed by British soul elder Omar vocalising Curtis Mayfield's lament for the slavery by other means of America's drugs apocalypse, ‘Here But I'm Gone’. But George's warmly liberated character dominates. As so often with this group of players, it's remarkable how traditional she is on several hard-bop solos. It's the soft power of an open heart and mind which keeps her music present-tense. Daniel Casimir's limber funk bass and Shirley Tetteh's sometimes Afro-funk-inflected, bubbling guitar prove the scene's subtle variety, and their own worth as versatile, Most Valued Players. The incubation of George's talent in Gary Crosby's Tomorrow's Warriors, Courtney Pine's Venus Warriors and Jazz Jamaica shows how determinedly British jazz's black elders are passing torches. Flowering in a new generation, this is the sound of a woman who has already overcome.