Sons Of Kemet

Shabaka Hutchings is one of the most influential musicians of nu-jazz. The London-based saxophonist with a Caribbean background dissolves boundaries between genres and devotes himself – with his other bands – to South African music (Shabaka & The Ancestors) and electric sounds (Comet is Coming). With the two drummers and tuba player of his Sons of Kemet he has now released an »overwhelming album that opens up new spheres of sound at every moment« (Musikexpress). »Black To The Future« attempts to capture the principles of African ontology and cosmology, conceives Blackness as an evocation of power, remembrance and healing, and describes a future in spiritual and human equilibrium that emerges from knowledge of the present and indigenous past. Thus, musically, ancestors such as Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders can also be heard out (like Hutchings' bands they found a home on the legendary Impulse! label); while the present resonates with guests such as grime singer D Double E, music activist Moor Mother and Black Lives Matter poems. With a universal view, Sons of Kemet combine rhythms and scales from the Caribbean, West Africa and London underground clubs into a flow with political force so self-evident that listening to music here becomes a physical experience. Or as the Süddeutsche Zeitung put it, »Live, the quartet is revolutionary.«