SHABAKA'S NEW CALLING

“If I was still playing the sax, it’d be so easy,” the former Sons of Kemet and The Comet is Coming bandleader Shabaka Hutchings admits. On stunning debut album Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, he turns to the flute and follows a spiritual compulsion to take a new path

- WILL RICHARDS

ON NEW YEAR'S Day 2023, Shabaka Hutchings shared a message with fans, revealing that last year would see his final performances on the saxophone, the instrument on which he made his name. “I look forward to approaching each remaining show I do on it this year with the magic and intensity which a spirit of closure and intention can bring to musical proceedings,” he wrote at the time.

Through his bands Sons of Kemet, The Comet is Coming, and Shabaka and the Ancestors, the musician became a figurehead for a London jazz scene revered across the globe, picking up Mercury Prize nominations and universal critical acclaim. His superbly energetic playing turned jazz gigs into dance parties and ushered in a new era of wider appreciation for the genre in Britain.

Hints at this sea change had come a few months earlier, in November 2022, when Shabaka released the EP Afrikan Culture under his own name. It saw him playing the flute, clarinet and more in a shift from rhythmic jazz to something spacier and more New Age.

Followers on social media will have also seen Shabaka — who now performs solely under his first name — sharing videos of himself playing a wide range of flutes and woodwind instruments across the world, often performed in nature. Last month, he released his debut solo album, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, a gorgeous continuation of this sound and the first window into the future of a trailblazing artist.