‘If you remember the contributions of people in the past, it gives you energy to go forward’
Jazz trailblazer Shabaka Hutchings and his Sons of Kemet bandmates talk to Shaun Curran about the spiritual power of music, the ‘corrupt’ race report and how their new album redefines black power
British-barbadian jazz musician Shabaka Hutchings says the new Sons of Kemet album, Black to the Future, looks to reaffirm and redefine what it means to strive for black power. “People just don’t really know what it means,” Hutchings says. “It’s not talked about other than within very limited frameworks. We want to broaden the idea to mean getting sources of power from black ways of seeing the world. We are using black as a metaphor for traditional African cosmological structures of thought. The more you research it and the more you understand and contextualise them within our modern-day realm, the more power you’ll have.”
This is Hutchings’ purpose, then: to act as a conduit, and to elicit spiritual enhancement through music. As the prolific figurehead of London’s recent jazz explosion – the 37-year-old saxophonist/ clarinettist also composes for psych-jazz trio The Comet is Calling and space-age South African ensemble Shabaka and the Ancestors – he has been central to realigning what contemporary jazz can stand for, and how it can sound.
Hutchings spearheads a new generation of musicians – including Moses Boyd and Nubya Garcia, fellow alumni of London’s influential jazz education programme Tomorrow’s Warriors – that are only tangentially connected to the old American jazz traditions of blues and swing. Instead, the new guard take inspiration from their multicultural heritage and the music of the African diaspora – everything from reggae to jungle to grime – to push jazz into thrilling new directions.
Hutchings’ music has a revolutionary feel. Sons of Kemet’s previous album, 2018’s Mercury Prize-nominated Your Queen is a Reptile, took apart the notion of monarchy, with every track named after a significant woman of colour omitted from modern narratives. Shabaka and the Ancestors’ 2020 LP We Are Sent Here by History, meanwhile, foretold an apocalyptic scenario (prior to the Covid-19 pandemic) and advanced a reshaping of society.
I meet a relaxed Hutchings and his three equally polite Sons of Kemet bandmates – tubist Theon Cross and drummers Tom Skinner and Edward Wakili-hick – at a rehearsal studio in northeast London. Sitting with a plastic shakuhachi on his lap (a Japanese flute he has recently picked up – he treats me to a short demonstration), Hutchings dictates conversa
tion with the sort of deep spiritual thinking that binds the band together.
“We all read the same kind of stuff, and talk about it, listen to music that carries that message,” says Wakili-hick. “We live it as well.”
Having met at a live improv gig in 2011, the quartet have become a unified force, creating a form of jazz that has its roots in the Caribbean tuk bands of Hutchings’ school years in Barbados: a viscerally rhythmic and kinetic sound full of verve, incorporating elements of Afrobeat, calypso, dub and hip-hop with Hutchings’ staccato tenor.
Black to the Future is the most developed illustration of this vision yet. Its sonic landscape is broader, its emotional resonance deeper. It is a record that meditates as much as it blazes.
“It is a reflection of our maturity and interaction as a band,” Hutchings says. There are vocal entries from Lianne La Havas, rappers Kojey Radical and D Double E and poet Joshua Idehen, as well as contributions from jazz luminaries Steve Williamson and Angel Bat Dawid.
Designed as a “sonic poem”, the album’s tracklist presents an assertion of the historical black experience (Pick Up Your Burning Cross, Hustle, Envision Yourself Levitating).
The album’s heart, To Never Forget the Source, represents Hutchings’ belief in learning from the past to envision a better future.
“We’re trying to get acknowledgement of those non-western world views that emphasise remembrance as crucial to the gaining of power,” Hutchings says. “That’s the essential tenet of ancestral worship. That if you remember the contributions of people of the past, it gives you an energy to go forward in the future”.
Does he feel that there is a lack of respect for elders in modern society? “Yes. Just look at how much care-home workers are paid. The idea we have here is you lose more and more until you die. Whereas if you have the idea that you gain more and more until you pass away, then you have that level of respect to see what our elders can give us.”
Though it was largely completed by autumn 2019 – Hutchings added overdubs and woodwinds during the first lockdown – the record nonetheless crackles with the fury that erupted after the murder of George Floyd last summer – an event Hutchings describes as “the brutal tip of a very complex iceberg.”
He did not consider Derek Chauvin’s conviction to be a celebratory moment. “It’s the least they could do,” he says with an incredulous laugh.
The album is bookended with Fields of Negus and Black, two contributions from Idehen that were a direct response to Black Lives Matter. The former questions white liberal solidarity; the latter is the exasperated pain of hundreds of years of oppression.
“Black is tired”, Idehen begins, before the track closes with his primal scream of “leave us alone.” It is a startling moment, akin to the final scene of a film that haunts you for days after.
“I find that line interesting,” Hutchings says. “It’ll have different resonances for everyone, and that will change over time. There’s a personal perspective and a societal, group perspective.”
They all agree that Black Lives Matter has started a welcome dialogue around inclusivity and diversity in institutions.
“Just having a statement that Black Lives Matter is raising awareness of the fact that for many years they haven’t,” Cross says.
“Black genocide is how countries like America and England have been able to thrive. That statement brings awareness that our resistance and presence matters.”
What did they make of the Government’s recent controversial race report, which concluded that there was no evidence of structural racism in the UK?
“I expected no better,” Hutchings says, to a chorus of approval. “Asking a Tory Government to do a race report, what do you expect? It’s going to be corrupt. Everything else they do is corrupt. We have a report where they say we are the best at race. OK, cool. What do we do with that information? Pat ourselves on the back?”
I wonder what Hutchings thinks a practical implementation of his ideology would look like?
“That’s the thing, there is no practical way of that manifesting itself,” he says. “It’s a personal journey. Any attempt to engage with the capitalist structure is doomed to failure.
“But that is why we say ‘Black to the Future’. We all come from Africa as a Homo sapiens people. So the more we understand the route, the source, the more power we’ll have.”
For Hutchings, that power is best expressed through his art.
“Music is a healing force. There is a sonic healing when you listen to music you like that resonates with your own spirit.”
It’s why he is anticipating a cathartic summer when gigs finally return. An incendiary performer, he has missed the live environment: in 2019, Hutchings played 140 shows across his various projects.
“We’re a group species, human beings. We’ve had that stripped away from us. To do that again will be fulfilling a human need. The introduction of live music won’t have a small impact – it will cause some form of transformation.”
Black to the Future is out now.