Brit’s Son’s Of Kemet Win BEST JAZZ ACT at the 2021 MOBO Awards

The MOBO Awards – which celebrates Black music and culture – have announced their 2021 winners. This year’s victors included Cleo Sol, who picked up best ‘R&B/Soul Act’, and the Shabaka Hutchings-led Son’s of Kemet won ‘Best Jazz Act’.

Sons of Kemet are a British jazz group formed by Shabaka Hutchings, Oren Marshall, Seb Rochford, and Tom Skinner, the quartet founded by Shabaka Hutchings, and boasts a somewhat unorthodox lineup—saxophone, tuba, and two drummers—but for Saxman Hutchings it’s a natural arrangement. “I’ve never seen it as unconventional,” he says of the group’s instrumentation. “It’s just been that I wanted to play with those two drummers. In some ways it was split between a desire to play with the two individuals and also a desire to take away the function of the drums as being the thing that provides the rhythm. When you’ve got two drummers they converse with each other. It takes the onus off any one particular drummer to provide the beat, because there’s going to be a forward momentum just from them expressing together.”

Born in London, Hutchings moved to Birmingham at age two, then relocated to Barbados at six, remaining there til he was 16 (after which he returned to England). He began to play clarinet in the school band, and the calypso and soca music of Barbados’ Carnival not only provided Hutching’s first musical memories but informs Sons of Kemet’s kinetic intensity. “Everyone comes out on the street and it’s a massive party,” says Hutchings of Carnival, “and in some ways that’s the core feeling that we’re trying to get in Sons of Kemet. As someone from the Caribbean diaspora imagining that feeling, how I remember that feeling as a youngster, I want everyone in the room being so connected to that jubilant feeling of really just enjoying the celebration of music. That’s what I’m trying to get with the performances, the situation where every single person in that room can feel this energy that brings us all together. And once we are together, for me that’s when the transcendence can happen.”

In his teens, Hutchings was obsessed with reggae and hip-hop, especially Tupac, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, and E-40, and still practices by playing his saxophone along to rap albums like the Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready To Die. “What I’m trying to do a lot of times on the saxophone is provide that role of the MC, not from a narrative perspective but from the perspective of someone trying to provide this rhythmic relentlessness,” says Hutchings. “When I step on the stage in Sons of Kemet I’m not trying to be Sonny Rollins or John Coltrane, I’m trying to be someone like Capleton or Anthony B or Sizzla, in terms of just the energy that I’m coming up with: That’s who I want to be. My core vocabulary is jazz, but I’m not trying to have the energy of someone in a suit standing stationary in front of a microphone giving a nice round sound, I’m trying to just spit out fire.”

Now in his young 30’s, Hutchings first began garnering attention as a member of Melt Yourself Down, the “Nubian party punk” band led by fellow saxophonist Pete Wareham. Sons of Kemet (“Kemet” being the pronunciation of the ancient name of Egypt) marked his first group as a bandleader, and 2013’s Burn and 2015’s Lest We Forget What We Came Here To Do, both released by the UK label Naim Jazz, received significant acclaim, including a nod from influential DJ Gillles Peterson. Sons of Kemet’s new album, Your Queen Is a Reptile, their first record for Impulse!, is the band’s most fully realized creation yet, powered by Hutchings’ blazing, incendiary saxophone, Theon Cross’ tuba blasts, which sound like funky bass lines, and the high-octane interplay between multiple drummers (a revolving cast that includes Tom Skinner, Seb Rochford, and Eddie Hick).

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For 25 years, the MOBO Awards has remained a significant cultural event in the British music industry, celebrating excellence in Black music. Its enduring legacy as the premiere outlet for recognizing and honoring the artistic achievement of exceptional British and international talent in Hip-Hop, Grime, R&B and Soul, Reggae, Jazz, Gospel and African music has been unparalleled.

While jazz can tend to be obsessed with its past, Hutchings’ music is distinctly and defiantly forward- (and outward-)looking, which he feels owes a great deal to its makers’ Britishness. “I guess that’s an aspect of being a part of a musical diaspora,” says Hutchings. “Not being from the place that jazz is born from means that I don’t feel any ultimate reverence to it. It’s just about finding ways of reinterpreting how we’re thinking about the music, re-envisioning it, just like completely decontextualizing it and saying it’s up for grabs. For me, the history of jazz is a perspective. Obviously some perspectives may be worth more than others because the perspective of someone who came up in the land where it was formulated may have more weight than someone who just views it from outside, but it’s still just a perspective. Life is just a series of perspectives, and if we can sometimes trust the perspectives of others, to me then that’s where the magic happens.”

The Complete Listing of MOBO Awards 2021 winners were as follows:

ALBUM OF THE YEAR – DAVE “WE’RE ALL ALONE IN THIS TOGETHER”
BEST FEMALE ACT IN ASSOCIATION WITH ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND – LITTLE SIMZ
BEST MALE ACT – GHETTS
BEST NEWCOMER IN ASSOCIATION WITH ASOS – CENTRAL CEE
SONG OF THE YEAR IN ASSOCIATION WITH COVENTRY BUILDING SOCIETY ARENA -TION WAYNE & RUSS MILLIONS FEAT. ARRDEE, BUGZY MALONE, BUNI, DARKOO, E1 (3X3), FIVIO FOREIGN & ZT (3X3) – ‘BODY (REMIX)’
VIDEO OF THE YEAR – M1LLIONZ – “LAGGA” (DIRECTED BY TEEEEZY C)
BEST GRIME ACT – SKEPTA
BEST R&B/SOUL ACT – CLEO SOL
BEST HIP HOP ACT – D. BLOCK EUROPE
BEST DRILL ACT IN ASSOCIATION WITH TRENCH – CENTRAL CEE
BEST INTERNATIONAL ACT – WIZKID
BEST PERFORMANCE IN A TV SHOW/FILM – MICHEAL WARD AS FRANKLYN IN ‘SMALL AXE’
BEST MEDIA PERSONALITY – CHUNKZ & YUNG FILLY
BEST GOSPEL ACT IN ASSOCIATION WITH PREMIER GOSPEL – GUVNA B
BEST AFRICAN MUSIC ACT IN ASSOCIATION WITH AFROZONS WITH SHEILA O – WIZKID
BEST REGGAE ACT – SHENSEEA
BEST JAZZ ACT IN ASSOCIATION WITH BBC RADIO 6 MUSIC – SONS OF KEMET
BEST PRODUCER IN ASSOCIATION WITH COMPLEX UK – JAE5