Shabaka Hutchings

Shabaka Hutchings is widely regarded as a pioneer of the UK’s reinvigorated 21st-century jazz scene. While peers like Kamasi Washington, Makaya McCraven, and others were accelerating the renaissance in the U.S., the London saxophonist (born in 1984) and a few crucial collaborators were reimagining how jazz could sound within the context of England’s history and the rich lineage of African musical traditions. Both as a composer and as a bandleader in Sons of Kemet, Shabaka and the Ancestors, and The Comet Is Coming, Hutchings expands the outer limits of traditional jazz music, interpolating UK dance subgenres like acid house and rave music with prog rock and Afrofuturistic philosophy. His various projects offer different perspectives of his mission. Shabaka and the Ancestors engage in dialogue with the African diaspora through sprawling avant-jazz epics, while his work in The Comet is Coming confronts a technological apocalypse with dizzying grooves, funk-inspired basslines, and melodic horns that starkly differ from his more traditional jazz work in Sons of Kemet. Shabaka Hutchings aligns with a new generation of talent while standing alone as a wholly unique, inimitable artist.