TIMELINE is the band from which the F-ire collective was started, originally assembled in 1995 from a set of jazz musicians studying African music together - its music reunites the surprise of jazz with the fire of traditional African rhythms. With a language part contemporary urban, part traditional that allows and invites interaction on many levels, Timeline has been at the forefront of integrated projects with dance and song alongside its complex and humorous compositions. Its members are equally adept in a varienty of musical languages, having collectively studied various dance music styles as part of their long formation period.

Traditional community music/dance forms from worldwide sources underpin the multilayered interactive rhythmic counterpoint that characterise its sound - in performance, housing inside these structures frequent guests from all parts of the surrounding communities: Dancers such as Bullies Ballerinas, Ghanaian master musician Nana Tsiboe, vocalists Bembe Segue and Eska Mtungwazi, school children form Timeline's own well travelled education initiatives or trainee professionals from the F-ire workshop community...

Timeline's performances truly cross the barrier between stage and audience, and it was an interest the how and why of its music and methods from young London jazz musicians that ignited many other elements of F-ire. The F-ire big band Synergy started as an extended form of Timeline and Méta Méta is predominantly the same people playing an exclusively Cuban repertoire appropriated specifically for community involvement.