Shabaka Hutchings & Universes in THE MATRIX

Shabaka Hutchings — by the small-world principle — is within 6 degrees of most humanity. The matrix uses the principle behind this phenomenon to position the world's artists within discoverable reach of each other, and the planet.
THESE CURATED NODES are one degree forward from this Shabaka Hutchings node. Are these Shabaka Hutchings's curations?

CURATION STATUS

1 degree forward: by The Matrix via ↴

Who & Where

Name: Shabaka Hutchings
City/Place: London
Country: United Kingdom

Life & Work

Bio: Over the last half decade, Shabaka Hutchings has established himself as a central figure in the London jazz scene, which is enjoying its greatest creative renaissance since the breakthroughs of Joe Harriott and Evan Parker in the 1960s. Hutchings has a restlessly creative and refreshingly open-minded spirit, playing in a variety of groups—most notably, Sons of Kemet, The Comet Is Coming, and Shabaka & the Ancestors—and embracing influences from the sounds of London’s diverse club culture, including house, grime, jungle, and dub. “The common theme in my career as a jazz musician has been wondering if what I’m doing is the thing that I should be doing,” says Hutchings, who studied classical clarinet at college at London’s prestigious Guildhall School of Music & Drama. “Me learning about jazz, how to play and interpret, was always a case of just trial and error. I think where I’ve come to recently is I’ve stopped trying to think ‘Is what I’m doing valid? or ‘Is what I’m doing part of the jazz tradition?’ and just see myself as a musician.”

Now 33, Hutchings first began garnering attention as a member of Melt Yourself Down, the “Nubian party punk” band led by fellow saxophonist Pete Wareham. Sons of Kemet (“Kemet” being the pronunciation of the ancient name of Egypt) marked his first group as a bandleader, and 2013’s Burn and 2015’s Lest We Forget What We Came Here To Do, both released by the UK label Naim Jazz, received significant acclaim, including a nod from influential DJ Gillles Peterson. Sons of Kemet’s new album, Your Queen Is a Reptile, their first record for Impulse!, is the band’s most fully realized creation yet, powered by Hutchings’ blazing, incendiary saxophone, Theon Cross’ tuba blasts, which sound like funky bass lines, and the high-octane interplay between multiple drummers (a revolving cast that includes Tom Skinner, Seb Rochford, and Eddie Hick).

Born in London, Hutchings moved to Birmingham at age two, then relocated to Barbados at six, remaining there til he was 16 (after which he returned to England). He began to play clarinet in the school band, and the calypso and soca music of Barbados’ Carnival not only provided Hutching’s first musical memories but informs Sons of Kemet’s kinetic intensity. “Everyone comes out on the street and it’s a massive party,” says Hutchings of Carnival, “and in some ways that’s the core feeling that we’re trying to get in Sons of Kemet. As someone from the Caribbean diaspora imagining that feeling, how I remember that feeling as a youngster, I want everyone in the room being so connected to that jubilant feeling of really just enjoying the celebration of music. That’s what I’m trying to get with the performances, the situation where every single person in that room can feel this energy that brings us all together. And once we are together, for me that’s when the transcendence can happen.”

In his teens he was obsessed with reggae and hip-hop, especially Tupac, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, and E-40 (“he’s the Eric Dolphy of hip-hop,” Hutchings says of the West Coast rapper, “where he’s going is just completely out there”), and still practices by playing his saxophone along to rap albums like the Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready To Die. “What I’m trying to do a lot of times on the saxophone is provide that role of the MC, not from a narrative perspective but from the perspective of someone trying to provide this rhythmic relentlessness,” says Hutchings. “When I step on the stage in Sons of Kemet I’m not trying to be Sonny Rollins or John Coltrane, I’m trying to be someone like Capleton or Anthony B or Sizzla, in terms of just the energy that I’m coming up with: That’s who I want to be. My core vocabulary is jazz, but I’m not trying to have the energy of someone in a suit standing stationary in front of a microphone giving a nice round sound, I’m trying to just spit out fire.”

Hutchings distinguishes one group from another less by the music they make than by the different combination of personalities. While he describes The Comet Is Coming as having an “anarchist approach” to music (“In that we don’t talk about what anyone else is supposed to do,” he says, “we all just play what we think it should be”), with Sons of Kemet he’s the composer of all the tunes. “In some ways, it is my group,” he says of Sons of Kemet. “I can say, ‘No, stop here, this should be a break.’ But even within that, I trust the musicians. If they’ve got a better idea about what should happen then, we’ll try it out and see how it goes.”

Sons of Kemet boasts a somewhat unorthodox lineup—saxophone, tuba, and two drummers—but for Hutchings it’s a natural arrangement. “I’ve never seen it as unconventional,” he says of the group’s instrumentation. “It’s just been that I wanted to play with those two drummers. In some ways it was split between a desire to play with the two individuals and also a desire to take away the function of the drums as being the thing that provides the rhythm. When you’ve got two drummers they converse with each other. It takes the onus off any one particular drummer to provide the beat, because there’s going to be a forward momentum just from them expressing together.”

Contact Information

Management/Booking: Shabaka Hutchings
Management: Rachel Millar, rachcmillar@gmail.com
Booking Enquiries: Rachel Millar, rachcmillar@gmail.com

Sons of Kemet
Management: Rachel Millar, rachcmillar@gmail.com
Booking agent (Europe + ROW): James Wright, United Talent Agency, james.wright@unitedtalent.com
Booking agent (US + Canada): Andre Guerette (aguerette@paradigmagency.com) and Karl Morse (kmorse@paradigmagency.com)

Shabaka & The Ancestors
Management: Rachel Millar, rachcmillar@gmail.com
Booking agent (Europe + ROW): James Wright, United Talent Agency, james.wright@unitedtalent.com
Booking agent (US + Canada): Andre Guerette (aguerette@paradigmagency.com) and Karl Morse (kmorse@paradigmagency.com)

The Comet is Coming
Management: Kerstan Mackness, kerstan@funkyflymusic.com
Booking agent (UK + Japan):: Rick Morton, rick@blowuplive.com +44 7772 710 034
Booking agent (US + Canada): Andre Guerette (aguerette@paradigmagency.com) and Karl Morse (kmorse@paradigmagency.com)

Media & Markets

▶ Buy My Vinyl: http://shop.shabakahutchings.com
▶ Buy My Merch: http://shop.shabakahutchings.com
▶ Twitter: shabakah
▶ Instagram: shabakahutchings
▶ Website: http://www.shabakahutchings.com
▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY8dCYvZnJMw5tyQyy0-B0Q
▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UCQ5HsPFLAP73lCdXgutnIrA
▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/6CSenzyruOwRltis2wjmAy
▶ Spotify 2: http://open.spotify.com/album/4pxnDGBdoGu88h8ZInX5f5
▶ Spotify 3: http://open.spotify.com/album/6gtbrHeqtCg7pk213DAF1T
▶ Spotify 4: http://open.spotify.com/album/55Xi3WIyXMIUYPRRVboNQK
▶ Spotify 5: http://open.spotify.com/album/4S5MLu2PKU7uElm2V3JphK
▶ Spotify 6: http://open.spotify.com/album/1dU66qas6j5H0ym9ZGyJvJ
▶ Article: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/mar/10/history-needs-to-be-set-alight-shabaka-hutchings-on-the-radical-power-of-jazz
▶ Article 2: http://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/arts/music/shabaka-and-the-ancestors.html

Clips (more may be added)

0:12:40
SummerStage Anywhere Session: Shabaka Hutchings
By Shabaka Hutchings

78 views
3:48
Barbican Sessions: Shabaka Hutchings
By Shabaka Hutchings

74 views
0:19:13
The Comet Is Coming: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
By Shabaka Hutchings

76 views
1:31:20
Shabaka Hutchings & The Ancestors NTS Live at Jazz Cafe
By Shabaka Hutchings

84 views

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THE MATRIX WAS BUILT HERE, inspired in (the kabbalah-inspired fiction of) Borges' El Aleph, that in the pillar in Cairo's Mosque of Amr, where the universe in its entirety throughout all time is perceivable as an infinite hum from deep within the stone.

The Brazilian "aleph" doesn't hum... it sings.

w/ David Dye for U.S. National Public Radio

Given the immense untapped power of the small-world phenomenon, from Brazilians the matrix was expanded to include nodes per jazz artists, given jazz's common roots with Brazilian music (nodes based in publicly available information; some artists we informed — Bob Mintzer, Kamasi Washington, David "Fuse" Fiuczynski, Vijay Iyer, Greg Osby — and got thumbs up, others we'll get to), and moved on from there. Artists/academics are welcome to create their own nodes and curate (connect to other artist nodes, so that others may follow). BTW, our logo is a cortador de cana, cane cutter. It was designed by Walter Mariano, professor of design at the Federal University of Bahia to reflect the origins of the music the shop specializes in.

MUCH MORE on all of this in the window below (which, if you are logged in, will instead contain instructions on recommending), and in the window within that window (which includes a "radio" called by The Guardian one of "10 of the best music radio stations around the world"):