{"title":"Shabaka and the Ancestors","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"wisdom-of-elders","title":"Wisdom of Elders","description":"\u003cp\u003eTradition shapes your work. For saxophonist and bandleader Shabaka Hutchings, that's something he's long understood. After years spent in the orbit of London's jazz circuit, he examines and reimagines his influences with a dexterity that's unique. The album is a document of sessions combining Hutchings with a group of South African jazz musicians he's long admired. His connection to the group was Mandla Mlangeni (bandleader of the Amandla Freedom Ensemble), whom he'd flown there to play with over the past few years. Recorded across just one day, the group drew on their South African lineage - heroes like Zim Ngquwana and Bheki Mseleku - to bring their own slant to the American jazz lineage which is reconfigured in Hutchings' compositions themselves. Going beyond the jazz greats Hutchings cites, influences are drawn from plenty of other sources: Caribbean calypso, central African song structures and Southern African Nguni music all play a part. A regular sight on stages around London and beyond, playing - and often leading - groups like The Comet Is Coming, Sons of Kemet and Melt Yourself Down, he's part of a generation whose idea of jazz is pointedly unrefined. That's to say, 'Wisdom of the Elders' comes from an artist interested in the indefinable gaps more than fitting into boxes.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Brownswood Recordings","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50415006089547,"sku":"404609","price":32.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50415007007051,"sku":"404608","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/c77931da-0daa-4deb-ad08-b290944c5151_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726687169"},{"product_id":"we-are-sent-here-by-history","title":"We Are Sent Here By History","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe project was formed in early 2016, leading to their debut album later that year \u003ci\u003eWisdom of Elders\u003c\/i\u003e; a document of sessions combining Hutchings with a group of South African jazz musicians he’d long admired. His connection to the group was Mandla Mlangeni (bandleader of the Amandla Freedom Ensemble), whom he’d flown there to play with over the past few years.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eWe Are Sent Here by History \u003c\/i\u003eis a meditation on the fact of our coming extinction as a species. It is a reflection from the ruins, from the burning. A questioning of the steps to be taken in preparation for our transition individually and societally if the end is to be seen as anything but a tragic defeat. For those lives lost and cultures dismantled by centuries of western expansionism, capitalist thought and white supremist structural hegemony the end days have long been heralded as present with this world experienced as an embodiment of a living purgatory.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Impulse!","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP | x2","offer_id":50506971054411,"sku":"1086610","price":32.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/070a634e-7f26-42c3-bda6-68f6585d3f34_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727834873"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/shabaka-and-the-ancestors.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}