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Album blog Sons of Kemet - Your Queen is a Reptile

Shabaka Hutchins is the leader of the new generation of Londoners dominating contemporary forward thinking jazz. Together with a bunch of other young jazz players Shabaka is pushing the boundaries of the jazz genre. Sons of Kemet is one of the three projects that this saxophone player is working on.

I discovered Shabaka at North Sea Jazz fest 2017 where he played with his other project Shabaka and the Ancestors. This was a near spiritual experience of African influenced jazz supplemented with repetitive chants that got intenser during the concert. It truly was one the highlights that year and arroused my interest in Shabaka's music.

Sons of Kemet is less spiritual though no less Afrocentric than his other project and above all great uptempo party music. The band consists of four musicians: two drummers a tuba player and Shabaka himself blowing the saxophone.

Although there have been two previous albums by Sons of Kemet, this is the first album that I have checked out. The 2018 album 'Your Queen is a Reptile' is a high energy album that becomes political because of its album title, the song titles and the guest vocals on a limited number of tracks. The album artwork reveals that the title makes reference tot the Queen of England proclaiming that she, your queen, is a reptile. This should be interpreted as a critique on hereditary titles. The song tracks are then named after the black women that have inspired Shabaka, women who are remembered for their merit, not their bloodline. You can find a list below on this blog for a short description of each person.

The drummers are the driving force on the album, and because there are two of them, they keep the percussion dense and push the tempo. I’m not sure I would have liked the idea of a tuba in a jazz quartet if you would have told me before listening to the album, but it works really well on this record. The tuba mostly plays the bassline and at times complements melody of the saxophone well. It’s the tuba that makes this combination of instruments stand out and that brings the party feel to the music. But it is Shabaka on the saxophone that is clearly in the lead. Building up to frantic climaxes and taking the listener on melodious adventures.

Although the tracks are mostly instrumental there are vocals on the first two tracks and the last track. These are by spoken word artist Joshua Idehen and by dub-singer Congo Natty. Although I think the vocals work well on all three tracks I prefer the instrumental tracks that put more emphasis on the saxophone. Besides the vocal guest appearances there are also two fellow British saxophone players that feature on one track each, Pete Wareham and Nubya Garcia. Both of them work well with Shabaka adding a new layer to the music.

Sons of Kemet played at North Sea Jazz 2018 and got great reviews. I, unfortunately, missed the festival this year, but I will be able to catch another festival show by them later this month at Lowlands festival where they will be playing on Saturday early in the evening. The show is highly anticipated and look out for a concert blog post on that show!

Ladies on the track list

Ada Eastman - Shabaka’s great grandmother from Barbados

Mamie Phipps Clark - an American social psychologist who focused on the development of self-consciousness in black preschool children. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamie_Phipps_Clark

Harriet Tubman - an American abolitionist and political activist. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman

Anna Julia Cooper - an American author, educator, sociologist, speaker, Black Liberation activist, and one of the most prominent African-American scholars in United States history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_J._Cooper

Angela Davis - an American political activist, academic, and author. She emerged as a prominent counterculture activist in the 1960s working with the Communist Party USA, of which she was a member until 1991, and was involved very briefly in the Black Panther Party during the Civil Rights Movement. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis

Nanny of the Maroons - a Jamaica National Hero, was an 18th-century leader of the Jamaican Maroons. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanny_of_the_Maroons

Yaa Asantewaa - led the Ashanti war known as the War of the Golden Stool, also known as the Yaa Asantewaa war, against British colonialism. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaa_Asantewaa

Albertina Sisulu - was a South African anti–apartheid activist, and the wife of fellow activist Walter Sisulu

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertina_Sisulu

Doreen Lawrence - is a British Jamaican campaigner and the mother of Stephen Lawrence, a black British teenager who was murdered in a racist attack in South East London in 1993. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doreen_Lawrence

North Sea Jazz History:

Sons of Kemet 2014 - Saturday 12 JULI 2014 VOLGA 23:45 - 01:00

Shabaka and the Ancenstors 2017 - Saturday 08 JULI 2017 CONGO 21:00 - 22:15

Sons of Kemet 2018 - Saturday 14 JULI 2018 DARLING 23:30 - 00:45

Upcoming shows in the Netherlands:

Lowlands 2018, 18 August Saturday 20.15 in the X-Ray

Le Guess Who 8-11 November in Utrecht. Shabaka Hutchinson is one of the curators of the festival. He is also performing with Sons of Kemet XL

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Concert blog Kamasi Washington @ Paradiso 1-6-18

He is the man of the moment in jazz world and its a wonderful coincidence that I recently saw him and can dedicate my first concert blog to Kamasi. I had high hopes for a legendary show after I caught his closing performance of the North Sea Jazz Fest 2017. At that show he did a set list based on his 2015 worldwide breakthrough record ‘The Epic’. The live show blew me away! Two drummers on stage that continuously pushed the energy of the band, a great double bass player in Miles Mosley and a powerful sound by the man himself. The crowd really got into it, roared the band on, and danced like there was no tomorrow. If he could do that to a festival crowd that had been visiting concerts for three days straight then I could only imagine what they would deliver in a sold out Paradiso full of dedicated fans.

And boy did they deliver! They opened with ‘Change of the Guard’ and ‘The Rhythm Changes’, two Epic tracks and highlights of the North Sea Jazz show, and built from there. Highlight of the show was ‘Truth’ from his EP ‘Harmony of Difference’ which asks a lot of the band and the audience with several melodies swirling around at the same time. After a drum solo they headed into uncharted territory with new material off his, then still forthcoming, album Heaven and Earth. Both tracks ‘The Space Traveler’s lullaby’ and ‘Fists of Fury’ were well received and bode well for the album. The band produces a complex and overwhelming sound with multiple melodies that blow your socks off and seems to get intenser throughout the concert. Towards the end the entire crowd seemed to be in a trance and everybody got sucked into the intergalactic vibrations of Kamasi and his gang.

They played a relentless 90 minutes that captivated from beginning to end. Kamasi is the new saxophone superstar that can sell out back to back shows in the Netherlands in both ‘t Paard in The Hague and Paradiso in Amsterdam, both are pop-concert halls and bigger than your usual jazz venue. With all the young artists innovating and making great music today, nobody can deny that jazz is on the rise. Kamasi is the uncontested leader of this movement and blasts the music into a higher stratosphere full of bright psychedelic lights.

North Sea Jazz; please book Kamasi for 2019 or better yet, make him Artist in Residence or let him curate a stage!

Band: 

Kamasi Washington - Tenor Saxophone

Rickey Washington - Flute

Brandon Coleman - Keys

Miles Mosley - Double Bass

Ryan Porter - Trombone

Patrice Quinn - Vocals

Robert Miller - Drums

Tony Austin - Drums

Location: Paradiso, Amsterdam

Date: 1-6-2018

Set list:

Change Of The Guard

The Rhythm Changes

Giant Feelings (by Brandon Coleman)

Truth

Bobby And Tony’s Day Off (drum solo)

The Space Travellers Lullaby

Fists of Fury

Review of the concert:

http://www.writteninmusic.com/jazz/kamasi-washington-opent-muzikale-schatkist/

Past performances at North Sea Jazz: 

Friday 8 July 2016 in the Maas (With Metropole Orchestra)

Sunday 9 July 2017 in the Darling

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Great track by James Farm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AokCirClNt4&feature=share Looking forward to seeing them later this year in Rotterdam. Please book these guys at the 2019 festival!

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Stay connected to the festival

What’s up?!

Welcome to the North Sea Jazz festival blog. This is the place where you can stay up to date about the festival. From the announcement of the date, to the last blue notes blown on the Sunday evening of the festival this place will keep you connected to the festival. You’ll find announcements and links to dates, tickets, line-up and timetable in one place right here.

I will try to post a blog about one concert a month that I visit and review an album a week of artists that have played or will play at the festival.

For me this is a place where I can keep my friends and family up to date about the festival and hopefully inspire people planning to visit the festival to explore new music.

Please feel free to get in touch and let me know what you think!

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🎷Get hyped! 12, 13, 14 July 2019