The Hackney and Peckham club nights where absolutely anyone from the crowd can go up and perform

Every Monday, you can get the Overground to Hackney Wick, leave the station and do a quick walk through a short dark alleyway to your new favourite event. In the luminated courtyard, people queue with various instruments strapped onto them, to join the Orii Community Jam – a night of intimate live music.

The jam nights, every Monday at the Hackney Colour Factory, and every Tuesday at Jumbi in Peckham, start with a house band, which then slowly swaps in and out with people from the crowd, there to play the stage for the first, or 10th of 100th time.

There’s no bureaucracy or complicated system; if you want to jump on an instrument, you just have to speak to one of the band members, who are always happy to let you take over. The night is pleasantly unpredictable – from soulful voices to rap that gets the whole room jumping, from a trumpet solo to the crowd splitting into a walkway for vogueing, your night will be anything but boring.

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From the entrance you can feel that if people are not friends already, they will be by the end of the night, starting with the relaxed host that makes you feel like you’re entering a house party, to the organisers mingling around the crowd, hugging the regulars, smiling at all the newcomers.

Charlie Fenemer, the executive producer of Orii - which means ‘soul’ in Yoruba - calls it a “a developmental organisation where people can come and expand and learn and grow”. It started at the Colour Factory, when the Covid pandemic meant musicians could not play gigs, and Fred N’Thepe, the founder, came up with the idea of a jam session post-lockdown, when clubs were open, but everyone was still seated.

It launched as an event by musicians for musicians, for them to reacquaint with each other. Three years down the line, Ms. Fenemer says it is here to “fulfil the need for connection in a city that can be quite lonely sometimes, or the need for performance in the music scene in London which can be quite competitive.”

But don’t be fooled, Orii is not just a place for high-up musicians to pat each other on the back – it is open to all, and on stage the vocalists tell you: 'we are one, we are connected with you'. Ms. Fatima celebrates the diversity on the stage, saying: “There’s incredibly seasoned professional session musicians and also people who just played in their bedroom.”

My latest visit to the Hackney session saw Benji Appiah – the house drummer – ‘coaching’ two younger boys as they were finding their way around the bass, with a patience that made you forge there were 50 pairs of eyes watching. As vocalist Sunshine says, Orii is a place where “every mistake turns into something beautiful”.

And the community is still growing. On top of their two weekly jams, they have ad-hoc events and a birthday party coming up in July at the Jazz Café. This summer, you can catch them slowly easing into the world of electronic music too, a big goal for them in 2025.

Even those who might not want to jump on stage now or at all are in for a good time. You are encouraged to dance and clap, talk to the people around you. For one of the nights around Christmas, Orii scattered oranges around the Colour Factory. The rule was simple – you can have an orange, as long as you share it with someone you’ve never met before. Chiara Cappellini is a semi-regular, saying she always makes time to go to the events when she visits from UAE.

Speaking about the most recent jam night she attended: “It is something organic, that could only emerge out of London. The jazz bass, infused with the East London sound – the event flows and you can flow with it.”