Before listening to
Black to the Future
,
Sons of Kemet
's fourth album, reading the track list first is recommended. Bandleader
Shabaka Hutchings
sequenced it as a poetic statement to accurately and aesthetically foreshadow the record's narrative, thereby framing the context for its music.
remains a quartet with
Hutchings
on reeds and woodwinds,
Theon Cross
on tuba, and
Edward Wakili-Hick
and
Tom Skinner
on drums and percussion; they are joined here by a slew of vocal and instrumental guests.
carries the torch of musical polemic from
Max Roach
's
We Insist! Freedom Now Suite
Archie Shepp
Attica Blues
, and
Gil Scott-Heron
Brian Jackson
It's Your World
to
Linton Kwesi Johnson
Bass Culture
Rip Rig & Panic
Attitude
Public Enemy
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
.
address the Black experience from colonial slavery to Black Lives Matter's international ascendancy amid the struggle for self-determination while erasing artificial boundaries between jazz, dub, highlife, Afrobeat, calypso, rap, funk, and soul, without sterile posturing.
"Field Negus" commences with moaning tenor saxes, roiling snares, and kick drums.
Joshua Idehen
's urgent, narration was recorded during the BLM protests after
George Floyd
's death. The collective erases historical time between past and present: They're angry; they know oppression never sleeps. The interplay between
and guest saxist
Steve Williamson
blurs skronk and post-bop. "Pick Up Your Burning Cross" features
Angel Bat Dawid
Moor Mother
trading vocal lines as clattering Afrobeat meets Latin funk inside post-bop. On "Hustle,"
Kojey Radical
Lianne La Havas
entwine rap and honeyed soul over
' layered woodwinds and reeds and
Cross
' unruly tuba solo as the drummers trade syncopated fours. In "For the Culture,"
' instruments frame grime emcee
D Double E
's rap in Middle Eastern modalism, while
adds slinky rhythmic pulses and harmonic invention atop a massive Afrobeat groove. "To Never Forget the Source" is a fingerpopping meld of calypso, rhumba, and South African township jazz, rife with call-and-response between brass and reeds. "In Remembrance of Those Fallen"'s lilting whistles and flutes join tenor saxophone and tuba amid zigzagging Latin and Brazilian rhythms, while cumbia meets son jarocho, and skittering Afrobeat as
sings and screams through his horn amid a rhythmic dirge and dissonant tuba. "Imagine Yourself Levitating" intersects dub reggae, out jazz, and spidery funk.
Idehen
returns on closer "Black," delivering a prophetic screed as the band chaotically runs through the album's preceding catalog of styles and sounds. He stridently asserts that "Black is tired," while the band bristles. He delves into Black history's record of oppression for proof, but emerges with the hopeful realization that, "This Black praise is dance! This Black struggle is dance! This Black pain is dance!"
jams is a staggering achievement. Musically and culturally,
not only holistically conceive of a future, they begin to create one right now. ~ Thom Jurek