Saxophonist’s album shaped by tradition

LONDON-based saxophonist and band leader Shabaka Hutchings launches his new album

at The Orbit in Johannesburg tonight and tomorrow.

was recorded in the city. Tradition shapes your work and that’s what Hutchings has long understood. After years spent in the orbit of London’s jazz circuit, he examines and re-imagines his influences with a dexterity that’s unique. Drawing out the vision underlying his new album, he says: “I see energy as being a form of wisdom to be passed down through the ages.”

The album is a document of sessions combining Hutchings with a group of South African jazz musicians. His connection to the group was Mandla Mlangeni (band leader of the Amandla Freedom Ensemble), whom he’d flown here to play with over the past few years. Recorded across just one day, the group drew on their South African lineage – heroes like Zim Ngqawana and Bheki Mseleku – to bring their own slant to the American jazz lineage being re-configured in Hutchings’ compositions themselves.

Artists on the album include Mthunzi Mvubu on alto sax, Mlangeni on trumpet, vocalist Siyabonga Mthembu, Nduduzo Makhathini on piano, Ariel Zomonsky on bass and Gontse Makhene on percussion.

Hutchings’s first encounter with the rich legacy of the South African jazz scene was with Mseleku’s album

“I saw it in the library when I was 18 and though I didn’t know Mseleku’s name at that point, I recognised Courtney Pine and Steve Williamson, two British saxophonists who I was really into at the time. The first thing that struck me about this album was the feeling of the music. It had so much joy.”

He remembers the impact the album had on him. “I was trying hard to start the process of learning jazz. I would listen to artists and try to second-guess what they were doing technically and how I could utilise those elements of their style. With this, Mseleku’s album invoked the feeling of why this music was being made. What stories he was telling through the sounds. This is the feeling I get when I play with my favourite musicians in South Africa now. “There’s an attitude towards the creation of sound in which the feeling of the music reigns supreme and new stories, attitudes and reflections are being shown.”

His first trip to South Africa was in 2008 to perform at Pan African Space Station festival, and by 2013 he was visiting frequently.

Born in London, moving to the Barbados from the age of six to 16, his tenor sax has become a regular sight on stages around London and beyond since his return.

launch is at The Orbit in Braamfontein tonight and tomorrow. Tickets are R180. –

“The group drew on their SA lineage