Shabaka

Shabaka Hutchings functions as a composer while performing on flute, saxophone, and clarinet. As a founding member of the Heliocentrics, he helped elevate England’s 21st-century jazz scene. He guided Sons of Kemet through Your Queen Is a Reptile in 2018 and Black to the Future in 2021. With the South African ensemble Shabaka and the Ancestors he achieved international chart placement via Wisdom of Elders in 2016 and We Are Sent Here by History in 2020. He also shares leadership of the electro-acoustic, avant-futurist jazz-rock-dance trio the Comet Is Coming, which issued two widely praised albums during 2019. Stepping away from saxophone, he issued the flute-centered Afrikan Culture under the name Shabaka in 2022, then followed it two years later with the flute- and clarinet-centered Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, which includes contributions from Floating Points, Laraaji, and Lianne La Havas. In December he unveiled the Possession EP, another guest-filled release featuring Esperanza Spalding and Andre 3000 among its participants.

Born in London in 1984, Hutchings relocated to Barbados at age six and commenced classical clarinet studies at nine, taking up saxophone the next year. Upon returning to the United Kingdom he was named a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist in 2010, which supported multiple commissions and radio broadcasts, among them performances by Sons of Kemet. In July 2013 the Leasowes Bank Music Festival commissioned a work for clarinet and string quartet that he performed with the Ligeti String Quartet to enthusiastic notices. Sons of Kemet’s debut album Burn appeared that year and earned the 2013 MOBO Award for Jazz Act of the Year, while Hutchings received a nomination for Jazz Musician of the Year at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards. The following year Marshall Allen invited him to join the Sun Ra Arkestra; he performed and recorded a BBC Radio 3 session with the ensemble and received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Composer Award.

In January 2015 Hutchings journeyed to South Africa to record with local jazz musicians. He also accepted a London Sinfonietta commission to compose a “note to the new government” and served as Associate Artist for the Spitalfields Summer Festival. Sons of Kemet released Lest We Forget What We Came Here to Do on NAIM in September, while the electronic trio the Comet Is Coming, completed by Dan Leavers and Max Hallett, issued its debut EP on the Leaf label in October. The next spring the group delivered the full-length Channel the Spirits, which drew extensive critical praise and a Mercury Prize nomination.

Hutchings played a central role in percussionist/producer Sarathy Korwar’s Day to Day, an album recorded in India and London that united the modern jazz and electronics ensemble with the Sidi Troupe of Ratanpur and appeared on Ninja Tune in summer 2016. That early autumn Brownswood, Gilles Peterson’s imprint, released Wisdom of Elders by Shabaka and the Ancestors. While in South Africa he also contributed to pianist Nduduzo Makhathini’s Icilongo: The African Peace Suite.

Throughout the ensuing years Hutchings fostered cross-disciplinary collaborations within the London music community. In 2017 alone he appeared on Yazz Ahmed’s La Saboteuse, Zara McFarlane’s Arise, Alexander Hawkins’ Unit(e), and two Heliocentrics projects: World of Masks and the original soundtrack for The Sunshine Makers.

That autumn he signed with the historic U.S. label Impulse!, longtime home to John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, and many others. His first release for the imprint, Sons of Kemet’s internationally acclaimed Your Queen Is a Reptile, arrived in March 2018; he served as co-producer. That same year he and Nubya Garcia participated in the London concerts documented on Makaya McCraven’s Universal Beings, and he joined South African drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo’s Five Blokes for the Ogun album Uplift the People.

In April 2019 Hutchings contributed substantially to Angelique Kidjo’s Celia, her worldwide hit tribute to Afro-Cuban vocalist Celia Cruz. The session marked his sole outside project that year, as he concentrated on the Comet Is Coming, which released Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery in March and the six-track The Afterlife shortly afterward before touring in support. Returning to South Africa that autumn, he recorded We Are Sent Here by History with the Ancestors, Makhathini among them; Impulse! issued the album in March 2020, listing Hutchings as sole producer. Additional appearances that period included albums by Sibusile Xaba, Moses Sumney, Keleketla!, and Shake Stew. In March 2021 Sons of Kemet issued the African Cosmology EP, pairing the mid-length “Myth Science” with the twelve-minute “Rites of Passage,” then followed it in May with the charting Black to the Future.

Hutchings played a central part on British/Trinidadian poet Anthony Joseph’s Heavenly Sweetness album The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running for Their Lives and appeared on saxophonist Chelsea Carmichael’s 2022 release The River Doesn’t Like Strangers. His solo EP Afrikan Culture, credited solely to his first name, surfaced in May 2023. That year he also contributed to the Yussef Dayes Experience’s Live at Joshua Tree, London Brew’s self-titled debut, and Matthew Herbert and London Contemporary Orchestra’s The Horse’s Bones Are Flutes. In 2024 he performed on albums by Brazilian pianist Amaro Freitas, composer Ellen Reid, and vocalist Ganavya. April brought the solo debut album Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, followed in December by the five-track Possession EP featuring Nduduzo Makhathini, Andre 3000 (on whose New Blue Sun he also appeared), bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding, and rappers billy woods and E L U C I D.