(Impulse!)Shabaka Hutchings and co’s urgent fourth album, much of it recorded after the murder of George Floyd, nevertheless lifts the spirits and feeds the soul
Jazz is most often a collegial endeavour, but it has a star system too. It’s hard to overstate the significance of Sons of Kemet’s Shabaka Hutchings, a saxophonist whose relentless energy and pioneering spirit have been key to the development of the
British jazz scene over the past decade.
Dividing his youth between London, Birmingham and Barbados, Hutchings played with the Ethiopian jazz great Mulatu Astatke, among other more routine jazz apprenticeships. Currently, Hutchings has three bands – Kemet, the South African-leaning Shabaka and the Ancestors, and the Comet Is Coming. Tomorrow’s Warriors, the forward-thinking
London jazz incubator that schooled so much of the current crop of musicians in their teens, have become Today’s Warriors. They could hardly have a more urbane, bold and deep-thinking field marshal than Hutchings.