Shabaka And The Ancestors – We Are Sent Here By History [Impulse! Records]

Our album of the week is coming from a crucial part of our Worldwide FM family, Shabaka And The Ancestors. “We Are Sent Here By History” is out on Impulse! on the 13th of March, 2020.

Shabaka & The Ancestors have made their impulse! Records debut on March 13th with the band’s second studio album We Are Sent Here By History. With their breakout 2016 album, Wisdom of Elders, Shabaka & The Ancestors were established as a sudden force in spiritual jazz. But where that record warned of impending societal collapse, this one unfolds within it. Shabaka Hutchings, tenor saxophonist and clarinettist of the collective, refers to the album as a “meditation on the fact of our coming extinction as a species. It is a reflection from the ruins, from the burning.” On the lead single “Go My Heart, Go To Heaven” vocalist Siyabonga pays homage to his father’s favourite church song. The word “hamba” (or “go”) is repeated, and within the context of this track, it’s “about the point where one gives in and wants out of this world,” Siyabonga says. “But in times of darkness is a call to the light and the heart.”

Shabaka & The Ancestors formed in 2016. Shabaka had been flying to Johannesburg to play with trumpeter and bandleader Mandla Mlangeni, who connected him to a group of South African jazz musicians that Hutchings admired. After several sessions, their first album Wisdom of Elders was made. This follow-up record reunites the group, who recorded again in Johannesburg and Cape Town last year (2019). This album is more urgent, more unrelenting, darker and energetic, and presents a major social commentary in the context of ancient traditions. Shabaka explains this is “what happens after that point when life as we know it can’t continue.”

We Are Sent Here By History explores African and Afro-Caribbean traditions. The album takes the concept of the griot – the living archive of a historical narrative, the storyteller and contextualizer, and presents the album as the modern-day griot. An integral aspect to the project is the accompanying text to the album: South African performance artist Siyabonga Mthembu chants and sings on this record and composed lyrics for the album. Shabaka then chose song titles from the lyrics and composed poems around each title, based on Siyabonga’s lyrics. On the aptly titled “We Will Work (On Redefining Manhood),” Siyabonga sings a poem in Zulu that, when translated to English, shuns the archaic pillars of virility. From childhood, young boys are trained to suppress their emotions and suffer in silence. “This song sings from the point of the toxic masculine,” Siyabonga says. “It repeats the sentences they tell to their boys—to not cry, to not grieve and to not hurt.”

Hutchings has three primary projects – Shabaka And The Ancestors, Sons Of Kemet and The Comet is Coming – with a substantial number of awards and nominations between them, including winning the 2013 MOBO ‘Jazz Act of the Year’, Jazz FM Awards ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ (2015), ‘UK Jazz Act of the Year’ (2017) and ‘Jazz Innovation of the Year’ (2018), and Mercury Music Prize-nominations in 2016 and 2018.

Tracklist:

1. They Who Must Die (10:10)
2. You’ve Been Called (6:29)
3. Go My Heart, Go To Heaven (6:41)
4. Behold, The Deceiver (6:01)
5. Run, The Darkness Will Pass (4:09)
6. The Coming Of The Strange Ones (6:28)
7. Beast Too Spoke Of Suffering (2:58)
8. We Will Work (On Redefining Manhood) (5:24)
9. ’Til The Freedom Comes Home (7:06)
10. Finally, The Man Cried (5:48)
11. Teach Me How To Be Vulnerable (2:46)

Credits:

Shabaka Hutchings – Tenor Sax and clarinet
Mthunzi Mvubu – Alto Sax
Siyabonga Mthembu – Vocals
Ariel Zamonsky – Double bass
Gontse Makhene – Percussion
Tumi Mogorosi – Drums
Nduduzo Makhathini (Fender Rhodes), Thandi Ntuli (piano),Mandla Mlangeni (trumpet) on select tracks