SHABAKA HUTCHINGS heard a lot of calypso and reggae while growing up. This was because of his upbringing from age six to 16 in Barbados and it has formed part of who he is as a songwriter and musician.
The 31-year-old, living in England, now leads the band he formed, Sons Of Kemet, which includes Seb Rochford and Tom Skinner on drums, with Theon Cross taking over from Oren Marshall on tuba. Shakaba plays the sax.
He knew he always wanted a career in music, even though he made sure his studies were a priority.
“I was born in 1984 in London. When I moved to Barbados to live with relatives. I attended Wesley Hall Primary School and then Queen’s College. I was your typical teenager, into basement music and hip hop also.
“I always knew I wanted to be a musician from the time I became serious about playing.”
The songwriter learnt the sax while playing in the new defunct Conquerors Calypso Tent and the clarinet in school and the cadet bands and as a member of the Barbados Youth Orchestra.
After returning to Birmingham, England, to complete his studies, he was introduced to Soweto Kinch, who was running a weekly jam session where, for the first time, Shabaka was introduced to jazz. Soweto introduced him to another jazz luminary – Courtney Pine – who taught Shabaka improvisation.
During this time in Birmingham, Shabaka was a member of the Birmingham Schools Symphony Orchestra, Midlands Youth Jazz Orchestra and the Walsall Jazz Orchestra. In these bands he was able to tour Holland and Germany and perform twice at the Monteux Jazz Festival.
Shabaka began to delve into the jazz music catalogue at Birmingham library, while constantly sharpening his own skills, winning a place to study clarinet and then saxophone at London’s prestigious Guildhall School Of Music And Drama.
At age 18 he started his own band and took a turn at songwriting.
“I wanted to see how my work would be received, so to get my music out there I formed Splay, playing in different venues.”
The next group was zed-u, which recorded an album, Night-Time On The Middle Passage.
He joined and performed with more groups, recording albums and singles, until he founded Sons Of Kemet in 2011.
“I got together the musicians I liked playing with best in London and wrote music for that unusual combination of tuba, sax and two drum kits. Kemet is the original name of ancient Egypt, and the name means that we are all descendants of this region in terms of ideologies which were formed here during the height of its civilisation and spread towards Europe and later assimilated by the Greek thinkers.
“I see Sons Of Kemet as a group that’s free to explore even more areas,” he added. “The music is driven by the band’s synergy, but it could go anywhere, and we’ve played everywhere from sit-down art venues to sweaty nightclubs and international festivals; we’re not forced into one direction.
“We can let our musicality take on a life of its own. When we play live, we know what the end result is: everyone in hysteria. But how we get there is anyone’s guess.’
Burn, the band’s first album was released in September 2013, earning MOBO Best Jazz trophy that year, which remains one of Shabaka proudest achievements: “It felt like lots and lots of work had actually paid off,’ he said, adding that one of the first tunes he ever wrote, Adonia’s Lullaby is on the album.
Shabaka told EASY he isn’t specific “about the genres of music that I like. As long as music touches me emotionally I can get with it. Also, I tend to go in phases of music that I’m into . . . at one time I was checking out a lot of groove music from the 1970s Kenya”.
The band has released their second album, Lest We Forget What We Came Here To Do. He describes the latest collection as “a meditation on the Caribbean diaspora in Britain”.
“The realisation dawned after I’d started writing these tunes,” he explains. “I was thinking of my grandmother’s generation from the Caribbean, who came here to work incredibly hard, and also what it means to be a black person in Britain now, especially a generation of youth experiencing high unemployment, and those elements of society who are not always easy to see. My mother and grandparents live in England but all my other extended family are in Barbados.”
Shabaka explained Afrofuturism, a track on the new album, on the band’s website as: “The bass rhythm on that track is based on a traditional Barbadian style called tuk, with a bass and snare drum; it’s similar to fife music from New Orleans, but there are also links to West African roots, and Western military band music.
“Barbados is quite a small island, and before the emancipation of slaves, there was nowhere for people to privately retain African cultural traits or beliefs – so they were finding ways to keep those elements in “acceptable” forms of music.
“I think it could be a Caribbean thing: to express something with deep meaning about society, that might come from having experienced trauma, within a form that might feel quite light-hearted. You get the same thing in calypso music.’
Since his first song, Shabaka’s songwriting skills have grown.
“I think songwriting is just an extension of a musician’s experiences and how they view the world, so as the musician matures so does the songwriting. I draw a lot of inspiration from sounds I remember from growing up (even if the end result bears little relation to the original).
“I also get inspired from all the musicians I meet and play with, different scenarios always force me to reconsider what I want to say with my own music and whether the methods I employ to transmit my message to audiences are adequate. My favourite part of the process is hearing new tunes performed live for the first time.”
