Sons of Kemet
Black to the Future
Impulse!
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As a white man raised in an almost homogenously white part of the UK, everything I know about racial violence and the callous subjugation wielded indiscriminately by the country I was born in was prompted by the music I love. History lessons at school covered the Industrial Revolution ad nauseum and our “glorious” victory (unaided, of course) in two world wars. The real history came instead from blues music then soul music and, finally, hip-hop. Music became my teacher and, in many ways, despite 24-hour news and inescapable social media, it remains as such.
As a parent in these phony culture war times, it is my job to imbue my daughter with a sense of the world’s inequity and how she can help tip the balance the right way. To shape the future, she must know the past and use her privilege to support and promote a brighter future where history’s totality is told, however unsettling it may be for the coddled, privileged and deluded portions of (white) society.
Sons of Kemet are a startling addition to the musical curriculum, bristling as they do with vitriol, wisdom and pride. The quartet comprised of Theon Cross on tuba and Tom Skinner and Eddie Hick on drums is rounded out and led by the totemic Shabaka Hutchings, a bandleader and artist of the highest caliber who plays saxophone and clarinet. Their first two records (2013’s Burn and 2015’s Lest We Forget What We Came Here to Do) helped light the touch paper for this British wave of jazz renaissance, but it was their third (and first major label) release that really lifted them towards the stratosphere.
2018’s Your Queen Is A Reptile (on Impulse!) is a phenomenal, Mercury Prize nominated record that berates a racist society and the culture that upholds it, while radiating pride in a set of heroes for the most part hidden by that unbalanced and inherently prejudiced system. A million miles from what some might consider jazz, it is protest and street-fighting music that bristles with intelligence, defiance and righteous ire.
Their fourth and latest album, Black to the Future, manages to maintain that standard and push slightly further into the collective musical conscience of music fans beyond the boundaries of jazz, courtesy of its exceptionally well-judged guest spots. It arrives at the perfect time (the way the greatest albums do) as well. Recorded and mixed in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s death, it arrives just weeks after the verdict that brought some sense of justice.
That it should fit in that cycle is apropos, since the titles of the songs also form a cycle that is designed to issue a call to those downtrodden. It runs thus: “Field Negus,” “Pick Up Your Burning Cross,” “Think of Home,” “Hustle,” “For The Culture,” “To Never Forget The Source,” “In Remembrance Of Those Fallen,” “Let The Circle Be Unbroken,” “Envision Yourself Levitating,” “Throughout The Madness, Stay Strong,” “Black.”
Further structure is given to the album by its bookending by tracks that feature poet Joshua Idehen, who reinforces the cyclical nature of the piece with two thunderous body blows to the colonial exploitation that continues to shape the world to this day. As Theon Cross’ bass line rumbles malevolently on opener “Field Negus”, Hutchings’ plaintive wailing accompanies an impassioned, prideful rejection of the status quo from Idehen: “Thank you / For refusing me that inch / Because now I do not recognize your yardstick . . . We are rolling your monuments down the street like tobacco / Tossing your effigies into the river, they weren’t even worth a funeral pyre.”
The band works in perfect unison throughout. It seems churlish to pick out highlights of their dynamic interplay and the way they complement each other, but for anyone dipping their toe into the world of Sons Of Kemet perhaps the most immediate impact is that of the seemingly never-ending rumble of Theon Cross’ tuba. For all that brass bands (be they colliery bands in the north of England or jazz bands in New Orleans) may use the tuba in lieu of a stringed bass, the replacement of stand up or electric in a four-piece jazz band is a genuinely revelatory experience, as it lends even more resonance to these monumental offerings.
The second guest, who provides further evidence of the organic links between jazz and other genres in the whirlpool of London music, is rapper Kojey Radical. Already blessed with the most sonorous and authoritative tones, his contribution to the bubbling beauty of “Hustle” brings an Old Testament gravity to the song, which is perfectly complemented by the honeyed backing tones of Lianne La Havas.
The breadth of feelings and tones on the album is quite something too. There’s the frenetic jump of the invigorating “Pick Up Your Burning Cross,” which gives way to the lilting Caribbean beauty of “Think Of Home.” Double E pops up to inject dancehall lyrics to the sinuous rhythm of “For The Culture” and Hutchings’ restrained solemnity on “To Never Forget The Source” highlights his impeccable tone and flow.
His tone and flow are conspicuously absent on the second half of the outstanding “Let The Circle Be Unbroken” and present instead is a devastatingly breathless struggle to be heard. Gone is his usual fluidity replaced by fitful spasms of strangled notes before the band joins him in the chaos of his inability to function before stillness takes hold at its climax. Parallels to the loss of a life at the hands of corrupt, racist policemen are hard to avoid.
Equally affecting are the joys of “Envision Yourself Levitating” and “Throughout The Madness, Stay Strong,” both of which rise and fall several times in their duration. The former though has the slowest, least complicated beat and Hutchings’ fluttering, winged saxophone, while the latter has twitchy percussion and a bass line on an upward trajectory propelling it to multiple climaxes.
Finally, Idehen’s passion and ire rounds out the album in style: “Black says keep your 40 acres / Just let Black reach for the end of the street / Just let Black reach into Black’s own car / Black says it’s always been like this / It’s you who’s late to woke / . . . Just leave Black be / You already have the world / Just leave Black be / Leave us alone.”
Black to the Future demonstrates the immense power of the quartet, as they inch their way towards wider audiences beyond those that traditionally consume jazz music and point, once more, to Shabaka Hutchings’ figurehead status among British musicians of any genre. That he has two other groups (Shabaka And The Ancestors and The Comet Is Coming) also shifting expectations of genre and creating new ways to use the vocabulary of jazz, makes him one of the most important musicians around right now and he deserves all the flowers he will surely receive.
Notable Tracks: “Field Negus” | “Hustle” | “Let The Circle Be Unbroken” | “Throughout The Madness, Stay Strong
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