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Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.
Tomorrow’s Warriors: the Sound of London, Part 2
by Russell Perry
In the last hour, we explored the new London scene anchored by a broadly diverse set of players who share encouragement by the innovative educational group Tomorrow's Warriors. We featured music by Nubya Garcia, one of three tenor stars who are breaking out of the scene and in this hour we'll turn our attention to the other two, 37-year-old Shabaka Hutchings and 34-year-old Binker Golding—players, mentors, teachers and charismatic advocates for improvisational music.Playlist Host Intro 0:00 Zara McFarlane ...
read moreShabaka Hutchings: Black to the Future
by Chris May
Though he is far too modest to make any such claim himself, most observers agree that saxophonist and clarinetist Shabaka Hutchings is the standard-bearer for the new wave of jazz musicians who have emerged in London since around 2015. Hutchings is a few years older than most of the cohort. He made his debut recording in 2007 while still a student at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, on keyboard player Funsho Ogundipe's The Afrobeat Chronicles Vol. 2 (Flying ...
read moreSons of Kemet: Black To The Future
by Chris May
Sons Of Kemet is led by tenor saxophonist, clarinetist and composer Shabaka Hutchings who, though he is far too modest to make any such claim himself, is the de facto standard-bearer for the new wave of musicians who have emerged on the London jazz scene since around 2015. The band is one of three Hutchings either leads or co-leads which are signed to Impulse!. The other two are the cosmic-fusion trio The Comet Is Coming and Shabaka & The Ancestors, ...
read moreA Jazz Immuno-Booster: Part 8
by Ludovico Granvassu
The immuno-booster series is back. After all and, sadly, the pandemic is everything but over so our need for soothing and uplifting music is greater than ever. As usual, we've asked a number of prominent jazz musicians to share with our readers the music they rely for encouragement. For this instalment the selectors were Uri Caine, Paolo Fresu, Shabaka Hutchings, Phillip Johnston, Andrea Keller, Marie Krüttli, Hermon Mehari, Myra Melford, Matthieu Michel, Vanessa Perica, Sélène Saint-Aimé and Matt ...
read moreImpulse! Records: An Alternative Top 20 Zeitgeist Seizing Albums
by Chris May
There can be little argument that a jazz label ever captured a zeitgeist more completely than Impulse! did during its original 1960s incarnation. In the US, the fight back against white racism was cresting, opposition to the Vietnam war was growing, outrage over the assassinations of figures of hope such as President Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X was boiling over, and inner cities were literally ablaze with protest. Impulse! entered this arena in 1961. For ...
read moreShabaka And The Ancestors: We Are Sent Here by History
by Karl Ackermann
Even as Shabaka Hutchings moves the evolution of jazz forward, We Are Sent Here By History laments the present-day conditions of conflict, suffering, parity, and the struggle to survive. The saxophonist's breakthrough album came with his Sons of Kemet on Your Queen Is A Reptile (Impulse! Records, 2018). He also leads the jazz/electronica hybrid The Comet Is Coming. Shabaka and the Ancestors' debut, Wisdom of Elders (Brownswood Recordings, 2016) essentially featured the same group of South African musicians, but here ...
read moreShabaka & the Ancestors: We Are Sent Here By History
by Chris May
Reed player Shabaka Hutchings became the first British musician to sign to the iconic (for once the word is justified) Impulse! label when his band Sons of Kemet did so in 2018. It was a deal for which his management could rightly be proud. It was also an affirmation which Hutchings felt deeply, for in the 1960s and 1970s Impulse! had recorded many of his formative influences, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders among them. In 2019 Hutchings took ...
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