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Shabaka - Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace makes 'I CARE IF YOU LISTEN's Favorite Albums of 2024'

Posted: December 11, 2024

Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace by multi-instrumentalist Shabaka Hutchings is, in a sense, a debut album. And yet, the album also serves as a reintroduction to the artist, a levitating, stunning work chock full of the lessons he’s learned over the course of his life and career. And perhaps, most importantly, it represents the spirit of exploration that the artist is most tapped into these days.

Shabaka's musical exploration includes employing a variety of flutes, including the ancient Japanese Shakuhachi, which he started playing in 2020 during the pandemic. “Since then, it has slowly changed the scope of my musical inner landscape and drawn me towards a multitude of other instruments in the flute family,” he explained. “As more flutes have been added to my arsenal including Mayan Teotihuacan drone flutes, Brazilian Pifanos, Native American flutes and South American Quenas, I’ve started to appreciate the underlying principles that cause these instruments to resonate most fully and use this understanding to form a concept allowing me to freely move between instruments.”

On New Year’s Day 2023, in the wake of the release of his 2022 debut EP, Afrikan Culture (which notably featured the artist primarily on flutes), Shabaka announced that beginning in 2024 he’d take a hiatus from playing the saxophone publicly. He clarified in July 2023 on his Instagram page his intention to cease playing with bands in which the saxophone was his primary instrument (including The Comet Is Coming, Sons of Kemet and Shabaka and the Ancestors).

For the flute-forward album Perceive its Beauty, Acknowledge its Grace, Hutchings tapped into a remarkable cadre of players, including percussionist Carlos Niño and bassist Esperanza Spalding. Vocalists including Saul Williams and Lianne La Havas contributed to “Managing My Breath, What Fear Had Become” and “Kiss Me Before I Forget”, respectively. Floating Points, with whom Shabaka shared a stage with for their performance of Promises at the Hollywood Bowl, provided additional production on the track “I’ll Do Whatever You Want".

“I invited a bunch of musicians I’ve met and admired over the past few years of touring throughout the United States to collaborate and everyone said yes, which I constantly find breathtaking,” he disclosed. His aim was to gather the musicians at Rudy Van Gelder’s historic studios, which he says “informed the sound of so many seminal jazz albums that have shaped my musical aptitude. We played with no headphones or separation in the room so we could capture the atmosphere of simply playing together in the space without a technological intermediary. After recording hours of inspired interactions, I set to work producing an album from the material.”


I CARE IF YOU LISTEN's Amanda Cook and A. Kori Hill writes… In a time where the arts and creativity is systemically and politically undermined and unappreciated, it’s even more important to make art and celebrate it by listening, sharing, and talking about it. We need to show artists how much their work moves us; how it makes us better neighbors, better friends, and better people.

The albums gathered here are just a snapshot that honors the artistry and ingenuity of composers of today. We’ve taken a more democratic approach to our year-end list in 2024 and invited multiple people from our team to weigh in. Ranging in style, location, era, and purpose, these selections from ICIYL contributors and editors are a peek into the music that inspires our own creative practices; drives our thirst for knowledge; and expands our listening ear

Yaz Lancaster writes….Known for his stellar saxophone performances, Shabaka hung up his horn in December 2023 after playing Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” one more time. Since then, the bandleader has focused on his solo debut – but not without community. On Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace (Impulse! Records), the multi-instrumentalist convenes forces of jazz heavy hitters, New Age icons, and poetic rappers. In an era defined by uncertainty, struggle, and degradation of safeties/institutions, we can find strength in the meditative musings of Saul Williams.

We can ground ourselves in rejuvenating flutes and strings, and the sublime sweetness of vocalists Moses Sumney and Lianne La Havas. Shabaka even conjures Floating Points, Laraaji, and his father to aid in the cycling and release of energies – an exaltation of the bad and inhalation of the transformative. Perceive Its Beauty is a testament to the power of inner spirit, collective synergy, and the transfiguration that happens when we move between the two. 


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