British/Barbadian tenor saxophonist and composer Shabaka Hutchings fronts the modern avant-jazz octet Shabaka & the Ancestors. South African jazz musicians complete the lineup: alto saxophonist Mthunzi Mvubu, trumpeter Mandla Mlangeni, vocalist Siyabonga Mthembu, Nduduzo Makhathini on Rhodes and piano, bassist Ariel Zamonsky, percussionist Gontse Makhene, and drummer Tumi Mogorosi.
Hutchings traveled repeatedly to South Africa from 2012 through 2014, absorbing the country’s broad musical heritage. Early in 2015 he gathered the musicians to “present the musical language that I normally associate with my U.K. bands in the context of Shabaka & the Ancestors’ music and musical sensibilities.” He wrote a nine-part psalm that the group recorded; Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood label issued the album Wisdom of Elders in September 2016.
After spending subsequent years touring and recording with his own quartet and with the Comet Is Coming, Hutchings reassembled the Ancestors in South Africa. They worked intermittently for two years between studios in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The resulting Pan-African album We Are Sent Here by History fuses African and Afro-Caribbean traditions, using an international blend of spiritual jazz to explore the griot’s role in occidental African culture. Impulse! released the set in mid-March 2020.
