Shabaka Hutchings is a British-Barbadian composer and bandleader who came to prominence within the London jazz scene with the groups Sons of Kemet and The Comet is Coming. Since 2024, he has concentrated primarily on various schools of flutes and releasing albums under his own name.
As a solo artist, Shabaka Hutchings has released Possession, 2024, Perceive its beauty acknowledge its grace, 2024, and African culture in 2022. As leader of Sons of Kemet, he released the albums Black to the Future, 2021, Your Queen is a Reptile, 2018, Lest we forget what we came here to do, 2015, and Burn, 2013, the albums Hyper dimensional expansion beam, 2022, Trust in the Lifeforce of The Deep Mystery, 2019, Channel the spirits, 2016, and Prophesy in 2015 with the trio The Comet is Coming and the albums We are sent here by history, 2020 and Wisdom of elders, 2016, with the ensemble Shabaka & The Ancestors.
Since 2022, Hutchings has produced albums by Ganavya, Kofi Flexxx, Sons of Kemet, Chelsea Carmichael, CoN + KwAke and The Brother Moves On for his record label Native Rebel Recordings. the Between 2012 and 2021, the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Ligeti Quartet and the London Sinfonietta have commissioned classical compositions by Hutchings.
As curators and theorists, The Otolith Collective has engaged in the conception, creation and convening of platforms that make public ongoing research. Throughout this practice runs a preoccupation with the essayistic as form and vehicle for thinking the aesthetic-political stakes of temporality and interscalarity. The urgency of platforming animates the Collective’s presentation of the work of Bahar Noorizadeh, Chimurenga Library, Emma Wolukau-Wanamba, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Lungiswa Gqunta, Tony Cokes, Rania Stephan, Ayo Akingbade, Sue Clayton, Mark Fisher and Justin Barton, Silvia Maglioni & Graeme Thomson, Lamia Joreige, Etel Adnan, Eyal Sivan, Black Audio Film Collective, Peter Watkins, Chris Marker, Harun Farocki and Anand Patwardhan to name but a few, throughout and beyond the UK.
