Shabaka's Latest Adventure: Connecting to Nature and Breath With Flutes

Shabaka Hutchings, now Shabaka, has been a crucial and connected London-based musician for years, leading arena dance-jazz band Sons of Kemet, cosmic psych-dub-funk trio The Comet Is Coming, and the collaborative band Shabaka & the Ancestors. He began incorporating layered flutes on the last Sons of Kemet record Black to the Future, and kept on picking up more and other woodwinds, first on his 2022 ambient meditation, Afrikan Culture, and now on his new full-length, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace. On it, Shabaka plays flutes: the Slavic woodwind called svirel, Japanese shakuhachi, Andean quena, and even clarinet. Plus, rapper and flutist André 3000 contributes flute to “I’ll Do Whatever You Want”.

This time, in his visit to our studio, Shabaka, together with Charles Overton on harp and Austin Williamson on drums play some of the songs from Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace. Plus, Shabaka talks us through the different flutes in his bow case, including a clay turtle ocarina and a century-old shakuhachi. Read more on Shabaka’s Shakuhachi journey via SoundAmerican. – Caryn Havlik

Set list: 1. Insecurities / As the Planets and the Stars Collapse 2. Living 3. I'll Do Whatever You Want