Shabaka Hutchings

Few British jazz musicians have moved between as many worlds as Shabaka Hutchings. Born in London in 1984, he was raised partly in Birmingham and then Barbados, where he picked up the clarinet at nine and practised along to the hip hop verses of Nas and Tupac. Trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, he came up through the South East London scene, and his music draws on acid house, drum and bass, hip hop and soca, with less blues than jazz. Many of his contemporaries, Hutchings among them, shrug off the jazz label altogether.

Hutchings built his reputation through a run of bandleading projects. Sons of Kemet released Burn in 2013 and Your Queen Is a Reptile on Impulse! in 2018, a record that coincided with wider attention on UK jazz. Shabaka and the Ancestors debuted with Wisdom of Elders in 2016, and The Comet Is Coming's Channel the Spirits earned a Mercury Prize nomination. London Brew released its Bitches Brew-inspired set in March 2023. Having announced a saxophone hiatus at the start of 2023, he later returned to playing, and Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace arrived in April 2024.