Shabaka & the Ancestors, Irreversible Entanglements
Shabaka & the Ancestors
We Are Sent Here By History
(Impulse!)
Shabaka & the Ancestors’ second coming is an Afro-futurist meditation on the end of days and what comes next. We Were Sent Here By History is a dark and ecstatic rumination on societal collapse; a survey of the damage wrought by late-stage Capitalism, and the violent means necessary to begin anew.
Sometimes destruction is a necessary means to an end of antiquated old ways. It’s a historically significant and compelling lesson emanating from the grooves of decades-old records by everyone from German industrial music pioneers Einstürzende Neubauten to the cosmic jazz of the Sun Ra Arkestra.
Shabaka & the Ancestors keep the concept fresh by communing with an ancient strain of cultural and spiritual warfare. In the album’s opening number, “They Who Must Die”, South African performance artist Siyabonga Mthembu shouts: “We are sent here by history. Burn the names. Burn the archive. Burn the bills, burn the student loans. The mouth, the teeth. It’s clear, the species has surpassed the point of safe return. Blood and ash will soon redefine the land.”
We Are Sent Here By History is the Impulse! debut for bandleader and tenor saxophone and clarinet player Shabaka Hutchings (Comet Is Coming, Sons of Kemet). The album resonates as the flipside to another great work of earth-shaking jazz that Impulse! debuted in 1961: John Coltrane’s Africa/Brass.
But, whereas Coltrane’s vision stampedes like elephants celebrating their place on this green earth, Shabaka & the Ancestors offer a front-row seat to watch it all burn down.
The concept plays out in songs with titles such as “Behold the Deceiver”, “The Coming Of the Strange Ones”, and “Beasts Too Spoke Of Suffering”.
Hutchings, and a group of South African jazz players lock into sharp, circular melodies, volcanic rhythms, and Mthembu’s decries that he is not afraid to fight. Mthembu’s words are the seeds around which the group builds its visceral arrangements. As such, the album is a pure and radial expression of the aesthetics that 2016’s Wisdom of Elders introduced.
Here, songs like “Go My Heart, Go to Heaven” find Shabaka & the Ancestors at their tension-ridden best. The song is also the group’s most measured offering—menacing and organic—giving rise to a dark ambiance that utilizes outrage as a means to liberate a world held hostage by malaise, clearing a path to a more pure way of life for humankind.
Irreversible Entanglements
Who Sent You?
(International Anthems)
Near the beginning of Who Sent You?, the fever dream second offering from Irreversible Entanglements, the group’s spoken-word poet, vocalist, and frontwoman Moor Mother rises from the depths of a “A Code Noir / Amina.”
The song gives rise to a slow and swinging post-bop cacophony. Her voice is sharp, restrained, yet unwavering in its presence when she commands, “Stay on it.”
From the word go, Irreversible Entanglements unleashes a full-throttle free jazz and punk-fueled blow out with Who Sent You?
This is reactionary music that channels power from the self and from the ether to rise above these desperate times. The five songs that make up the album ebb and flow in a current of chaos and unsettled order, guided by a revolutionary spirit.
Chemistry is thick within the group, whose members hail from Philadelphia, New York, and Washington DC. Moor Mother’s words blend seamlessly with saxophone player Keir Neuringer, trumpet player Aquiles Navarro, double bass player Luke Stewart, and percussionist Tcheser Holmes’ interlocking movements.
Songs such as “No Más”, “Bread Out Of Stone”, and the nearly 15-minute title track unfold at a furious pace. The tangle of horns and rhythms move en masse in fugue-like bouts of pure improvisation—each player knows their bandmates’ instincts and reflexes.
It’s a silent telepathy of sorts that drives the group while expanding upon the artistic philosophies, musical intuitions, and creative legacies of the artists that inspired Irreversible Entanglements in the first place—Art Ensemble of Chicago (with whom Moor Mother collaborates on the 2019 album, We Are On the Edge), the Sun Ra Arkestra, Alice Coltrane, and Public Enemy to name a few.
Over the course of this five-song suite, the group engages free jazz turbulence with an arresting fervor. Press play and listeners have no choice but to clinch their fists, grit their teeth, and bring all of those anxieties of social, political, and existential angst into sharp focus.