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Sons of Kemet - Black To The Future.' Rage, resentment, and hope / NME

NME's Dhruva Balram writes....The experimental jazz quartet, led by Shabaka Hutchings, recruit Kojey Radical, Lianne La Havas and more for an incendiary evocation of Black Lives Matter.

Shabaka Hutchings is one step ahead – always. The saxophonist last released a record, his other band Shabaka and The Ancestors' ‘We Are Sent Here By History', in mid-March last year. This was the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic tearing through the United Kingdom; the album centred around themes of confronting the destruction of humanity. ‘Black to The Future', Hutchings' latest record, this time with Mercury Prize-nominated quartet Sons of Kemet, is an 11-track album that finds them at their most dynamic and urgent.

Across these 11 tracks, Sons of Kemet have crafted a narrative that sees Black people freeing themselves from the constraints of oppression, a message strengthened by the closing track's rapturous and improvisatory free jazz instrumentation, which underpins Idehen's pointed monologue as he screams into the ether: "This Black struggle is dance / This Black pain is dance / Just leave Black be / You already have the world / Just leave Black be / Leave us alone."      PHOTO: Udoma Janssen

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