30. Soweto Kinch, Musician

Soweto Kinch is a Birmingham-based jazz saxophonist and rap artist who has made an international impact with his innovative blend of hard-bop and hip hop styles.

Born in London in 1978 to a Barbadan father - the playwright Don Kinch, with whom he regularly collaborates - and a British-Jamaican mother, he grew up in Handsworth and attended Bromsgrove School. He has a degree in Modern History from Oxford University.

Kinch first came to wide attention in 2002 when he won a competition for young saxophonists at the Montreux Jazz Festival against fierce international competition. Two weeks later he sealed his arrival by collecting the Rising Star category in the BBC Radio Jazz Awards.

His debut album Conversations with the Unseen, featuring his regular quartet, won a prestigious Mercury Prize nomination. Its follow-up, Tales of the Tower Block: A Life in the Day of B19, released in 2006, proved to be the first instalment of an ambitious two-part concept album about a group of characters living in a Birmingham high-rise. Featuring narration by TV newsreader Moira Stewart, it was an audacious blend of jazz, hip hop and radio drama.

However, it led to a long-running dispute with high street record shops - which he dubbed "The War in a Rack" - over their refusal to stock the album in their hip hop as well as jazz sections. The protracted delay in the release of part two of the album eventually led to a split from his record label, Dune.

Kinch has so far declined to take the well-trodden path to London, committing himself to Birmingham and helping to develop other local talent through his Sunday night Live Box sessions at The Drum.

He is an associate artist of the recently relaunched Town Hall.

He masterminded the ambitious and ground-breaking Flyover Show, which in May this year brought together comtemporary urban art and music in a free event held underneath the Hockley flyover.

Awards include MOBO Award for Best Jazz Act 2003, the Urban Music Awards Best Jazz Act 2004, BBC Radio Jazz Awards Best Instrumentalist & Best Band 2004 and Peter Whittingham Award for Jazz Innovation 2004.