The London-born, Barbados-raised multi-instrumentalist, Shabaka Hutchings, best known from Sons of Kemet, here creates stunning, genre-transcending music spanning Afro-Caribbean fusion, London dance music club culture, and the rich South African jazz tradition “all within the freedom afforded by the legacy of the American ‘jazz’ tradition,” he says. Deploying flutes of globe-ranging cultures, and with ethereal elements such as harp, he constructs transporting “sonic poems.”

Over the course of the past decade, the lion’s share of his touring and recorded work has been with three bands: Sons of Kemet, The Comet is Coming, and Shabaka and the Ancestors, but Shabaka has always been open to change. His musical exploration includes employing a variety of flutes, including the ancient Japanese Shakuhachi, Mayan Teotihuacan drone flutes, Brazilian Pifanos, Native American flutes, and South American Quenas. On New Year’s Day 2023, in the wake of the release of his 2022 debut EP, Afrikan Culture (which notably featured the artist primarily on flutes), Shabaka announced that beginning in 2024 he’d take a hiatus from playing the saxophone publicly.

Shabaka’s most recent album is Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace (Impulse 2024). Artists included on the album include pianist Jason Moran, percussionist Carlos Niño, drummer Nasheet Waits, and bassist Esperanza Spalding, as well as vocalists Saul Williams and Lianne La Havas among others. Like in previous albums the titles of the songs have significant meaning that Shabaka hopes will resonate with listeners as much as the music does. He coined the term “sonic poems” to capture the concept. As Shabaka explains, “each track title reads as a poem. Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace follows in this tradition of titles as symbolising a narrative which is necessarily subjective and expansive in relation to the listener’s experience with the heard music.”

For this performance with Earshot Jazz, Shabaka on various flutes will be joined by Burniss Travis (bass), Charles Overton (harp), Chris Sholar (electronics), and Austin Williamson (drums).

*Earshot Jazz COVID-19 Policy: Earshot recommends that all ticket holders be vaccinated. Policy subject to change. Full COVID policy here.

SHABAKA photos by atibaphoto