Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace

In 2023, jazzman Shabaka Hutchings shelved his saxophone for the foreseeable future. A consequential decision, it followed the end of Sons of Kemet, the Comet Is Coming, and South African jazz project, Shabaka and the Elders. In November 2022, he released Afrikan Culture, recorded on shakuhachi, flute, and clarinet. He followed in 2023 with the mysterious, ambient jazz/hip-hop offering Flowers in the Dark by Kofi Flexxx on Native Rebel Recordings. Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace was recorded by Maureen Sickler at Rudy Van Gelders New Jersey studio in 2022. Shabaka uses wits and intuition to summon this music up from the unconscious. Hes assisted by a studio cast that includes pianists Nduduzo Makhathini and Jason Moran, drummers Nasheet Waits and Marcus Gilmore, flutist Andre 3000, percussionist Carlos Nino, harpists Brandee Younger and Charles Overton, bassists Esperanza Spalding and Tom Herbert, multi-instrumentalist Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Floating Points, vocalists, and rappers. "End of Innocence" finds Shabaka playing clarinet with Moran, Waits, and Nino; the brief incantation sounds like a folk song. "As the Planet and Stars Collapse" places his lilting shakuhachi in lush company with both harpists and Atwood-Fergusons strings. On "Insecurities," Moses Sumneys elastic falsetto engages the flute in seamless improvisation with Overtons harp. Shabaka uses a quena flute on the gently abstract "Managing My Breath, What Fear Had Become" with Nino and South Africans Makhathini on piano and Surya Botofasina on synth. New York rapper Elucid joins Spalding, the harpists -- who all engage with Shabakas flute line by line -- and electronicist Chris Sholar on the poignant "Body to Inhabit." "Ill Do Whatever You Want" is the closest thing to a fully improvised jam here. It showcases Andre 3000s Teotihuacan drone flute alongside Shabakas shakuhachi, a Rhodes Chroma by Floating Points, Dave Okumus guitar, and Herberts and Spaldings basses, with Gilmores drums and Ninos percussion framing a wordless vocal from Laraaji. "Living" offers transcendent holism as Shabakas Slavic svirel (a Russian flute) and Eska Mtungwazis vocal entwine, ratcheting tension with Kate Bush-esque intensity while keenly interacting with harps and strings. The saxophone does make an appearance on "Breathing" alongside the flute and clarinet. The tune is a virtuosic duet with Rajna Swaminathans mridangam in improvised call-and-response. Lianne La Havas joins Shabaka, Moran, Waits, and Nino on "Kiss Me Before I Forget," the closest thing to a pop-jazz ballad here. Shabakas father, the Barbados-born singer Anum Iyapo -- who worked with King Tubby -- offers poetry on set-closer "Song of the Motherland," a paean to the glory of Blackness amid overdubbed flute lines and Overtons glissando harp playing. There isnt anything incendiary or fiery about Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace. Its gentle, warm production and unhurried playing are deceptive: These tunes, as rendered, are far more complex in arrangement and presentation than they appear. Combined, they reveal the artists pursuit of creative excellence as an aesthetic practice with a spiritual dimension. ~ Thom Jurek

UKジャズ・シーンの中心を担うサックス奏者、シャバカ・ハッチングスがソロ名義での初アルバムをリリース。サックスをフルートやクラリネット、尺八に持ち替え、新たな音楽的挑戦をした意欲作で、アンドレ3000やカルロス・ニーニョらが参加。フローティング・ポインツとの"I'll Do Whatever You Want"にはジャンルの垣根を大きく越えた美しき世界が拡がっている。
bounce (C)野村有正