Recommended New Release, Shabaka, 'Afrikan Culture'

Photo credit: Udoma Janssen

If you’re at all tuned-in to the jazz scene down in London, you’ll no doubt have had the name Shabaka Hutchings crop up more than a handful of times. Having made his name playing in various ensembles around the city’s jazz circuit – from spaced-out electronica with The Comet Is Coming, to the raw rhythmically-driven Sons of Kemet and the more spiritual-jazz sounds of Shabaka and the Ancestors just to name his more heavily-involved projects – Afrikan Culture is the first time Shabaka’s released anything resembling a true solo project under his own name. But he’s not totally alone on this one; occasional duets pepper the setlist, be them with UK-based Ukrainian harpist Alina Bzhezhinska (who helped organise the jazz-musician run Concert for Ukraine earlier this year), instrumentalist and producer Kwake Bass’ beatboxing (Kwake also works closely with the likes of fellow Londoners Kae Tempest and Sampha), guitarist of rock band The Invisible, Dave Okumu, or Senegalese kora player Kadialy Kouyaté.

This fairly short 8-track release sees Shabaka on various wind instruments – though is usual sax is nowhere to be seen – the multireedist employs the clarinet, flute, and even the shakuhachi (a Japanese bamboo flute), as well as a couple of vocal and kalimba performances. Shabaka performs many of these parts himself, the tracks layered with multi-tracked performances, and the result is extremely atmospheric and meditative. This layered style of composition bears some similarities to the more melodic moments on Sons of Kemet’s 2021 album Black to the Future, and here performances of soft shakuhachi and wind chimes on tracks like ‘Black Meditation’ lean pretty heavily into ambient territory. Dake Okumu’s guitar lines on ‘Explore Inner Space’ play on this ambient style too, stacking the already dense soundscape with digitally-manipulated loops.

It’s not just washy ambient soundscapes, though; tunes like ‘Ital Is Vital’ see Shabaka taking the shakuhachi into some fiercer rhythmic detours (well, as fierce as a piece of bamboo can get), while Kouyaté provides some mellow backing with his kora almost resembling a classical guitar. If you’ve enjoyed the more spiritual sounds of Shabaka’s work in the past – think records like 2020’s We Are Sent Here By History – Afrikan Culture should be right at the top of your to-listen list, and at just shy of half an hour, it makes for a wonderful bite-sized package of improvisational explorations.