Shabaka Hutchings

“I’VE got my grand plan,” explains Shabaka Hutchings. “It’s all sewn up until 2024 – there’ll be a new Comet Is Coming album next year, then in 2023 I’m not releasing an album, then there’ll be a solo album in 2024, the year that I’m 40. It’s getting complex!”

No wonder the London-based saxophonist, composer and bandleader has to plan so far ahead: he’s juggling three separate outfits, The Comet Is Coming, Sons Of Kemet and Shabaka And The Ancestors, each representing a very different strand of today’s (and perhaps tomorrow’s) jazz.

As if he’s not busy enough, Hutchings has also started a label, Native Rebel, to release albums he’s written and produced for other artists. “The first album is by Chelsea Carmichael,” he says. “It’s a really good record.

The whole thing is that I write all the music, produce it, direct it in the studio but don’t play on the records.”

As he explains, it’s been an eventful journey from his early features 15 years ago, when he learnt from bandleaders such as Funsho Ogundipe – now, it’s Hutchings who’s firmly in charge. “I guess you only learn how to be a bandleader,” he muses, “by being a bandleader.” TOM PINNOCK

AYETORO

OMO OBOKUN, THE AFROBEAT CHRONICLES VOL 2, DIRECTIONS IN MUSIC BY FUNSHO OGUNDIPE

FLYING MONKEY, 2006

Nigeria meets the UK in this Afrobeat set featuring a young Hutchings

I was at the Guildhall School Of Music then, studying classical music in the day. Just to find relief from that I was trying to play any gigs, any type of music. I met this guy called Funsho, the guy who runs this group, who took me under his wing, giving me