Music like Shabaka And The Ancestors

Shabaka Hutchings is a British-Barbadian jazz saxophonist, clarinetist and band leader. He leads the bands Sons of Kemet and Shabaka and the Ancestors. He is also a member of The Comet Is Coming, performing under the stage name King Shabaka.

Hutchings has played saxophone with the Sun Ra Arkestra, Floating Points, Mulatu Astatke, Polar Bear, Melt Yourself Down, Heliocentrics and Zed-U.

Hutchings was born in London, but moved to Birmingham at the age of two. From the age of six was raised in his parents' native Barbados. There as a nine-year-old he picked up the clarinet and practised along to the hiphop verses of Nas, Notorious BIG and Tupac, as well as the rhythms of Crop Over. He returned to England to receive a classical-music degree on the instrument. In London he joined the Tomorrow's Warriors programme, a blues workshop led by expat New Orleans trumpeter Abram Wilson, where Hutchings met many of his future collaborators in the burgeoning South East London jazz scene.