Shabaka Hutchings
Shabaka Hutchings is a British jazz saxophonist, clarinettist and band leader. He leads the bands Sons of Kemet and Shabaka and the Ancestors. He is also a member of The Comet Is Coming, performing under the stage name King Shabaka. Hutchings has played saxophone with the Sun Ra Arkestra, Floating Points, Mulatu Astatke, Polar Bear, Melt Yourself Down, Heliocentrics and Zed-U. Background. Hutchings was born in London, but moved to Birmingham at the age of two. From the age of six he was raised in his parents' native Barbados. There, as a nine-year-old, he picked  up the clarinet and practised along to the hip hop verses of Nas, Notorious BIG and Tupac, as well as the rhythms of Crop Over. He returned to England to receive a classical-music degree on the instrument. In London he joined the Tomorrow's Warriors programme, a blues workshop led by British bassist Gary Crosby, Janine Irons and expat New Orleans trumpeter Abram Wilson, where Hutchings met many of his future collaborators in the burgeoning South East London jazz scene. Career. Hutchings and many of his contemporaries shrug off the "jazz" label, eschewing the restriction especially as the many  groups reflect influences ranging from acid house and drum & bass, to hiphop and soca, with less of a blues influence than jazz, which reviewers have noted marks a distinction between the London scene as represented by Hutchings and American jazz music. Shabaka and the Ancestors debuted in 2016 with the album "Wisdom of Elders" on Gilles Peterson's Brownswood Recordings label. The Comet Is Coming, a trio with keyboardist Dan Leavers and drummer Max Hallett, received a Mercury Prize nomination for their debut album "Channel the Spirits", released on The Leaf Label in April 2016. Sons of Kemet, a quartet  of saxophone, tuba and two drummers, launched with the album "Burn" in 2013, followed up with "Lest We Forget What We Came Here to Do" in 2015, both on the Naim Jazz label, before moving to Impulse! for "Your Queen Is a Reptile" in 2018, which coincided with a breakout into wider public consciousness of the UK jazz scene, captured by the attention on the Hutchings-directed compilation "We Out Here" on Brownswood. In November 2018, Hutchings curated part of the programme for the Dutch Le Guess Who? festival. In March 2020, Shabaka and the Ancestors released "We Are Sent  Here by History" under Impulse! Records. Awards and honors. Hutchings has won a MOBO Award for best jazz act with the Sons of Kemet in 2013, the Paul Hamlyn Composer Award and Jazz Innovation awards from Jazz FM.