SOWETO Kinch is an artist at the busy crossroads of jazz and hip hop.

His last release, The Legend of Mike Smith, is a heavy duty offering, a Dante-inspired work based on the Seven Deadly Sins, which sees the protagonist – an emerging music star – doing battle with the vices.

It’s a sprawling double album full of ambitious narratives, with a street sharp sense of rhythm and rhyme.

Kinch also explores the psyche of human emotion and fuses all the strands of artistry, blending rap, funk, hip hop and beats in a flurry of unremitting speech and music.

“It was a five-year journey, putting Legend (of Mike Smith) together, and I find the further back I go in music, the further forward it takes me,” said Soweto, who provides one of the highlights of the Ribble Valley Jazz Festival.

“There’s 40 songs on the album, and I had this giant storehouse of beats and sounds I weaved into an arts performance that became a labour of love.

“I’m a musician, which often means serving the market, but it also a way of transforming our perceptions, creating things no-one’s ever heard before.”

Kinch, who landed a Mercury Music prize nomination for his work, added: “I often find that when I do a show there’s a coterie of over-fifties hard-core jazz fans on one side of the room, and a bunch of hip hop-loving teenagers on the other.

“Afterwards the kids often say they love jazz, and the older guys say ‘Ah, so that’s what hip hop is.

“For me, that’s what it is all about – pushing out the boundaries.”

With his weighty fusion of hip hop and jazz, it not surprising that Kinch is revered and respected by his fans.

“It is an interesting time, but going back 40 years, Miles Davis wanted to collaborate with Jimi Hendrix, so musicians have always plundered the sound of jazz and vice-versa.”

He plays the saxophone in the instinctive tradition of British jazz.

“At school, I copied all the John Coltrane records from the library onto cassette.

“The Pharcyde, De La Soul and Tribe Called Quest sampled jazz records – their hip hop music has resonances of jazz in it.”

He says bands like Roller Trio and Portico Quartet are at the cutting edge of a new sound.

“They have interesting ways of getting new audiences to consider the music first before realising it’s jazz.

“That’s very healthy.

“But there is also a pressure to make it cool.

“You need to seed it with something else. You can’t just play the music.

“One of the best things to come from touring is seeing young people respond to the music.

“Particularly to instrumental passages, which you’d think are only relevant for older audiences.”

Kinch made his Ribble Valley bow at the town’s Atrium theatre last year and added: “We did the Clitheroe rapping song together, and that was very special man.

“I can’t wait to come back to Clitheroe.”

n Soweto Kinch, Ribble Valley Jazz and Blues Festival. Clitheroe Grand, Saturday, May 3 (1.30pm). Details from 01200 421599.