Ben Marc

Ben Marc is a split musical personality. The moniker is a stage name for the
London-based musician Neil Charles, who chose it as a hybrid of two nicknames from
very separate parts of his upbringing: “Ben” is what his bandmates in the jazz groupTomorrow’s Warriors (which later formed into Empirical) called him, and “Marc” is what he was called growing up in Birmingham, in a rich second-city
culture of hip-hop, reggae, and soul. Who Cares Wins, the second full-length Ben Marc album derived during the pandemic while he was working as a volunteer for the National Health Service in England, providing support to the elderly
in his area “I wanted to bring out both worlds.”
A self-described “nomad,” Marc spent his upbringing bouncing around places like
Birmingham in England and the island of Carriacou in the Caribbean, soaking up
different musical styles along the way. That experience made him a Swiss Army knife of a session musician and bandmate; on bass guitar. Marc has played sessions for legends like Charles Mingus and the Sun Ra Arkestra, pop band Gabriel’s and formed an experimental jazz group of his own, Zed-U, featuring Shabaka Hutchings on tenor sax . For many years now, Marc has served as
a touring member of the band for Ethiopian jazz giant Mulatu Astatke and having spent so much time bouncing around the globe with Ethio-jazz royalty,