The thing about something that can\u2019t continue is that eventually, it doesn\u2019t. Arriving at precisely the right moment, as all manner of crises upend the fraught and fragile order of things, comes the latest from ubiquitous saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings\u2019 South African tangent, a sextet supplemented by occasional guests. No, Hutchings and company aren\u2019t here to tell you it\u2019s all gonna be okay. But neither are they here to howl in despair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The album\u2019s essence is anchored in the words of vocalist and lyricist Siyabonga Mthembu \u2013 singer, orator, part griot and part prophet. He doesn\u2019t bother with a checklist of social and environmental concerns, which should be self-evident to all but the mouth-breathers at this point, but rather heralds the end of the world as we know it \u2013 and articulates a few notions about what might come after that, and how best to get there. Of particular importance is the addressing of obsolete patriarchal notions at the album\u2019s end, starting with \u201cWe Will Work (On Redefining Manhood)\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We Are Sent Here By History<\/em> marks the Ancestors\u2019 graduation from Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood imprint to the venerable Impulse! label, which once upon a time raised the profiles of John and Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra, and Pharaoh Sanders. It\u2019s thus an excellent home for some if not all of Hutchings\u2019 efforts, notably Sons of Kemet and of course his Ancestors material, arguably the most noteworthy amid the current revival of the spiritual jazz movement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Comet is Coming, Hutchings\u2019 London-based electro-jazz-punk freakout, has apocalyptic preoccupations of its own, but they\u2019re irreverent, the End Times as an excuse to cut loose. The music and ideas on We Are Sent Here…<\/em> are not that at all. It\u2019s raw but nimble, tough but vulnerable, vigorously animated but thankfully uncluttered. It\u2019s also firmly Afrocentric, dignified even at its most out-there, and resolute in its convictions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n