Shabaka

Barbados, Birmingham, Guildhall

Shabaka Akua Lumumba Kamau Iyapo Hutchings was born in London in 1984 and moved to Birmingham at the age of two. From six he was raised in Barbados by his parents; his father, Anum Iyapo, worked as a graphic designer in reggae production. He took up the clarinet at nine, with hip-hop and the music around him in the Caribbean feeding into what he heard as possible on a wind instrument.

At nineteen he came back to England and took a classical clarinet degree at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. The other half of his training happened at Tomorrow's Warriors, the London programme run by the bassist Gary Crosby, which is where he met most of the players he would later record with. He held BBC New Generation Artist status from 2010 to 2012, the point at which the wider classical and jazz establishment started paying attention.

Three bands, then a full stop

Through the 2010s he ran several groups at once rather than one. The Comet Is Coming, the synth-and-saxophone trio in which he goes by King Shabaka, released Channel the Spirits on 1 April 2016 and was nominated for that year's Mercury Prize. Shabaka and the Ancestors, his South African band, also debuted in 2016. Sons of Kemet — two drummers, tuba and saxophone — put out Your Queen Is a Reptile in 2018 on Impulse!, picked up a second Mercury nomination for him, and did more than any other record to carry the new London scene abroad. The band stopped in 2022.

The shelf behind all this includes a MOBO award for best jazz act in 2013, the Paul Hamlyn Composer Award in 2014 and a Jazz FM innovation prize. He set up his own imprint, Native Rebel Recordings, in 2020.

Then, in early 2023, he announced he was stopping the saxophone, citing the physical and emotional cost of the touring that had built the reputation. It was not framed as a sabbatical with a return date attached, which is why the next three years read as a genuine change of direction rather than a detour.

The flute years

The turn had already been signalled. During the pandemic he fell for the Japanese shakuhachi, and the 2022 EP Afrikan Culture put flutes at the centre. The solo debut under the single name Shabaka, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace, arrived on 12 April 2024 on Impulse! and leaned on shakuhachi, quena, bamboo flute and svirel. Where the tenor had been clipped and confrontational, the flute playing was slower and more porous, propped up by harp, synthesiser and spoken word. Nine collected reviews averaged 83 on Metacritic.

The live version of that record was built the same way. At the Barbican on 9 May 2024, the last date of a European run, he played around a dozen pieces to roughly two thousand people with Alina Bzhezhinska and Miriam Adefris on harps, Elliot Galvin and Hinako Omori on piano, synths and modular effects, and Eska singing. Bamboo, metal and shakuhachi flutes, shakers and jingles replaced the volume his old bands traded on.

Of The Earth: one man, a portable rig and a rap verse

Of The Earth came out on 6 March 2026 on Shabaka Records, his own imprint, and he wrote, played, produced and mixed all of it himself. The alto flute is the centre of gravity, layered three to five times on some tracks for thickness; Brazilian flutes and clarinet appear; and the saxophone is back, treated as one option among many rather than the lead voice. The electronics and drum machines came from the compact setup he had been carrying with him on tour, and he has talked about the record being shaped by hearing it in different places as he travelled. The saxophone itself returned by accident of circumstance — he picked it up again for a memorial concert for the South African drummer Louis Moholo, and having it to hand changed what he reached for.

He also raps, for the first time on record, on two of the twelve tracks. He has credited André 3000's willingness to start again on an unfamiliar instrument as the push, and a friend's blunt suggestion that he had the voice for it. The verses are placed as another layer rather than as a feature spot.

The reception was strong without being unanimous. Nine reviews averaged 83 on Metacritic; The Quietus scored it 90, Beats Per Minute 85, and Marwa The Mountain, with saxophone and flute lines over off-centre percussion, was widely picked out. The Line of Best Fit was the dissenter at 60, calling the album easier to admire as a gamble than to love as a finished statement. Several writers made the same observation from opposite directions: for all the improvising and the harmonic sharp corners, it is not really a jazz record.

What the shows have become

He treats the album as stems rather than as a score. Live, the recorded parts are foundations to be stretched with loops, extra material and whoever is in the room, which has produced three quite different formats in 2026. At Big Ears in Knoxville on 28 March he played with a drummer and also took a duo set with Thurston Moore. At the Village Underground launch in London on 9 April, Tara Lily opened with a vinyl DJ set and Shabaka worked alone with Austin Williamson on drums, surrounded by flutes, saxophone and triggering gear, in low light and incense, drawing on Those Of The Sky, Go Astray and A Future Untold before an encore; the reviewer noted the saxophone returning with restraint rather than force, with short bursts of the old attack that got people moving.

The largest statement so far was Shabaka and Friends at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 12 June 2026: two hours without a break, performed as one continuous piece with Sebastian Rochford on drums, Dan Nicholls on piano, keyboards, flute and lute, and Dudù Kouate on percussion and flute. The review called it astonishing and made the point that the material took off from Of The Earth rather than reproducing it.

Autumn 2026

The Coltrane centenary has pulled him back towards the horn in public. On 23 September 2026 he played A Love Supreme in full for Church of Sound at St James the Great in Lower Clapton, billed explicitly as Shabaka picking the horns up again, with tickets at £36. He is also one of twenty-one players on Miguel Atwood-Ferguson's ANANTA: Spirit Of Coltrane, out on Impulse! on 30 October 2026 alongside Brandee Younger, Jeff Parker, Flying Lotus, Immanuel Wilkins, Azar Lawrence and Joel Ross; the first single, Compassion, came out ahead of it.

The touring diary is busy and deliberately small-scale. Songkick lists seventeen upcoming shows, with Quartyard in San Diego on 8 October, a three-night run at Blue Note Los Angeles from 9 to 11 October, and Blue Note London on 19 October. After a decade of festival stages with Sons of Kemet and The Comet Is Coming, the current work is being presented in club rooms where a flute played at low volume can actually be heard.