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Shabaka & The Ancestors

We Are Sent Here By History

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Go My Heart, Go To Heaven
1 They Who Must Die  
2 You've Been Called  
3 Go My Heart, Go To Heaven  
4 Behold, The Deceiver  
5 Run, The Darkness Will Pass  
6 The Coming Of The Strange Ones  
7 Beasts Too Spoke of Suffering  
8 We Will Work (On Redefining Manhood)  
9 Til The Freedom Comes Home  
10 Finally, The Man Cried  
11 Teach me How To Be Vulnerable  
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On March 13, Shabaka & The Ancestors will make their Impulse! debut with the band's sophomore album We Are Sent Here By History. Their breakout 2016 album, Wisdom of Elders, established Shabaka & The Ancestors as a sudden force in spiritual jazz. But where that record warned of impending societal collapse, this one unfolds within it. Shabaka refers to the album as a "meditation on the fact of our coming extinction as a species. It is a reflection from the ruins, from the burning." On the lead single "Go My Heart, Go To Heaven," Siyabonga pays homage to his father's favorite church song. The word "hamba" (or "go") is repeated, and within the context of this track, it's "about the point where one gives in and wants out of this world," Siyabonga says. "But in times of darkness is a call to the light and the heart."

  • Discovering the sounds of London's new jazz / popMATTERS
    Posted At: January 25, 2022
    These London jazz musicians are all relatively young and just as anxious to embrace all subgenres of jazz, soul, and funk as they are resistant to the rules of the old guard.popMATTERS - John Garratt writes…This is a little story about a band I haven’t heard yet.In 2020, the annual Glastonbury festival in Pilton, Somerset, was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The following summer, festival organizers ...

  • Shabaka & The Ancestors - We Are Sent Here By History makes 'JazzTimes: Top 40 New Jazz Releases of 2020'
    Posted At: January 11, 2021

    JazzTimes writes......For our 2020 Year in Review section, we calculated the top 40 new releases and top 10 historical/reissue recordings of 2020 based on year-end lists by our writers. They were asked to choose the 10 best new releases and five best historical titles-i.e., albums and box sets consisting primarily of music recorded 10 or more years ago. Some discs may have slipped through the cracks, but...

  • Shabaka & The Ancestors - We Are Sent Here By History makes 'The Elkhart Truth: 100 best albums of 2020
    Posted At: December 23, 2020

    From hip-hop to folk, Stacker recaps the frenetic year in music. The Elkhart Truth counts down the 100 best albums of 2020, according to data from Best Ever Albums. Stacker compiled data on the top 100 albums from 2020, according to Best Ever Albums, which ranks albums according to their appearance and performance on editorial and data-based charts, e.g., Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Billboard, and so on. T...

  • Shabaka and the Ancestors - Go My Heart, Go to Heaven makes NPR: Best Music Of 2020
    Posted At: December 4, 2020

    This week we shared NPR Music's best songs and albums of 2020, lists voted on, politely argued over and presented by our staff, station partners and contributors. Today we're featuring the good stuff from the private reserves. Below you'll find lists of top 10 albums and songs from the members of NPR Music's staff. Nate Chinen DIRECTOR OF EDITORIAL CONTENT, WBGO writes; In a year ...

  • Shabaka Hutchings with Britten Sinfonia have managed to push what can be done / giglist
    Posted At: November 20, 2020

    Finding a meeting place between jazz and classical is not as easy as the formal elements might suggest, but in this one-off collaboration for EFG London Jazz Festival, Hutchings and Britten Sinfonia created a real accessibility to a performance which might otherwise have felt somewhat like another world. Wrongly, I assumed something else of Shabaka Hutchings before watching this live, and the lack in...

  • The EFG London Jazz Festival returns like never before with a whisper that Shabaka Hutchings will make a surprise guest appearance / jazzwise
    Posted At: November 11, 2020

    In recent years, the EFG London Jazz Festival has become one of the largest such events in the world, with dozens of gigs in everything from the city's biggest concert halls to small clubs. But in 2020, the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have meant that festival director Pelin Opcin sees this year's event very differently. "The web is the core of our provision," she says. "It is the main platform for e...

  • Shabaka and the Ancestors 'We Are Sent Here by History' makes BBC Music Magazine's 'The best jazz recordings released in 2020 so far'
    Posted At: October 23, 2020

    A list of the greatest jazz albums released so far this year, as chosen by the BBC Music Magazine critics includes; 'Shabaka and the Ancestors: We Are Sent Here by History' featuring Shabaka Hutchings (tenor sax), Mthunzi Mvubu (alto sax), Siyabonga Mthembu (voice), Ariel Zamonsky (bass), Gontse Makhene (percussion), Tumi Mogorosi (drums), Nduduzo Makhathini (piano), Thandi Ntuli (piano), Mandla ...

  • Shabaka & The Ancestors - We Are Sent Here By History makes 'HENRY herald: 50 best albums of 2020 so far'
    Posted At: August 27, 2020

    Stacker sorted 2020's 50 best albums as of June, collecting statistics on this year's top albums from Metacritic. Each album is ranked by Metascore data and its number of reviews. Uncertainties have rocked the start of 2020, crushing promises of live concerts at venues and festivals. But today's artists aren't letting these aftershocks pause the show. The start of the new decade was blessed with so m...

  • Shabaka & The Ancestors - We Are Sent Here By History makes KAKE abc com '50 best albums of 2020 so far'
    Posted At: August 5, 2020

    Uncertainties have rocked the start of 2020, crushing promises of live concerts at venues and festivals. But today's artists aren't letting these aftershocks pause the show. The start of the new decade was blessed with so many fresh albums in various genres. While reality seems to grow more chaotic by the minute, these new releases are perfect for those who want to temporarily escape from the real world ...

  • Music Fest News is absolutely floored by Shabaka and the Ancestors 'We Are Sent Here by History'
    Posted At: July 19, 2020

    Floored. Absolutely floored by the sophomore album from South African group Shabaka and the Ancestors titled We Are Sent Here by History, released March 13. (And it seems like a trip to the group's first album, 2016's Wisdom of Elders, is mandated.) Shabaka Hutchings is a tenor saxophone and clarinet player who also has two other groups: The Comet is Coming and Sons of Kemet. All three now record on ...

  • Shabaka & The Ancestors - We Are Sent Here By History makes NEWS CHANNEL NEBRASKA '50 best albums of 2020 so far'
    Posted At: July 9, 2020

    On March 13, 2020 Shabaka & The Ancestors made their Impulse! debut with the band's sophomore album 'We Are Sent Here By History.' Their breakout 2016 album, Wisdom of Elders, established Shabaka & The Ancestors as a sudden force in spiritual jazz. But where that record warned of impending societal collapse, this one unfolds within it. Shabaka refers to the album as a "meditation on t...

  • Shabaka & The Ancestors - We Are Sent Here By History makes NPR: 'The Best New Songs You've Missed During Quarantine'
    Posted At: April 7, 2020

    Music still moves. While some musicians have decided, reasonably, to delay albums during the coronavirus pandemic, many more are choosing to create, inspire and uplift by moving up release dates or surprising us with unannounced songs. We're all overwhelmed with the news and retreating to creature comforts, and you might not have made time to find or listen to new songs and albums in a while. Press P...

  • Shabaka & The Ancestors - We Are Sent Here By History is a reflection of immense changes in society / JAZZ VIEWS
    Posted At: April 2, 2020

    Shabaka Hutchings is known to many as a key player in The Comet is Coming and Sons of Kemet and his strength of delivery and presence in a line up is formidable. Shabaka & The Ancestors' first album ‘Wisdom of Elders' released on the Brownswood label unleashed a powerful force on the music world and showed an enlightened and aware musician willing to place his beliefs and tenets before the ...

  • Shabaka & The Ancestors - We Are Sent Here By History makes npr music's 'top 11 albums of march'
    Posted At: March 31, 2020

    Music affords an escape, takes us back in time to reflect on the present, mirrors our aches and joys and offers serenity. As relentless news about the coronavirus continues, these albums were gifts during difficult times. This month, that included surprise drops from British saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings has a deep, thrashing bond with the South African musicians in the Ancestors, a band for our time...

  • Shabaka Hutchings tenderness is more evident than ever on 'We Are Sent Here By History' marlbank
    Posted At: March 30, 2020

    In its folkloric grandeur and ambitions that make it leap far beyond a more restricted sense of abum there is a collision of poetry, music and however implicit dance. Folkloric in one sense, a rewriting of priorities in terms of society and attitudes to gender and more in another there is a mystical sense of revelation drawn from Xhosa traditions, Rastafarianism and more in the lyrics and inspirations an...

  • Shabaka & The Ancestors narrate the apocalypse from a distant future / Pitchfork
    Posted At: March 28, 2020

    The British-Barbadian jazz saxophonist and his South African players narrate the apocalypse from a distant future, suggesting that in order to build anew, some things will first need to burn. In West Africa, histories have been passed down through generations by griots, storytellers who collect the wisdom of the past in order to help shape our fates. Even after the advent of the written word, such st...

  • The astral plane of Shabaka Hutchings / Passion of the Weiss
    Posted At: March 25, 2020

    We didn't invent listening to more jazz, we just implore you to do it. We also would like you to support Passion of the Weiss by subscribing to our Patreon. As tempting as low flight prices may be, Chris Robinson is staying home. Of the current generation of musicians pushing jazz in new directions, perhaps none synthesizes the music of the black diaspora into a personal sound and style as much a...

  • Elsewhere highly recommends Shabaka and the Ancestors: We Are Sent Here By History
    Posted At: March 21, 2020

    Shabaka Hutchings – of The Comet is Coming, Sons of Kemet and other evolving UK jazz/funk ensembles alongside this one – has advanced a strand of retro-Afrofuturism which links to Sun Ra, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Don Cherry and others. And given those references it is fitting that the group – back after their Wisdom of the Elders in 2016 – should now be on...

  • African-style jazz looks to the future on Shabaka And The Ancestors - We Are Sent Here By History / Financial Times
    Posted At: March 21, 2020

    An end-of-days theme runs through the album, which mixes free jazz, spoken word and church-rooted harmonies The acoustic South African Ancestors band are, sonically, the warmest of London-based Shabaka Hutchings's multiple projects and collaborations. Their springy grooves, catchy riffs and church-rooted harmonies are uplifting, and Hutchings's tenor sax and clarinet are undoctored. Their central...

  • Shabaka And The Ancestors is even deeper than before on 'We Are Sent Here By History' / STEREOGUM
    Posted At: March 20, 2020

    And now, here are the best new jazz albums of the month! In 2015, British reeds player Shabaka Hutchings, also of Sons Of Kemet and the Comet Is Coming, traveled to South Africa and hooked up with a crew of musicians: alto saxophonist Mthunzi Mvubu, trumpeter Mandla Mlangeni, keyboardist Nduduzo Makhathini, bassist Ariel Zamonsky, drummer Tumi Mogorosi, percussionist Gontse Makhene, and vocalist Siya...

  • Shabaka & The Ancestors focuses on how vulnerability and truth can set us free / Boulder Weekly
    Posted At: March 19, 2020

    Millennial British saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings teamed up with a similarly aged group of South African musicians to create the genre-redefining jazz found on We Are Sent Here by History. "We need to start articulating our utopias, articulating what needs to be burned and what needs to be saved," Shabaka told The New York Times. The album explores how toxic masculinity begets violence and authoritarianis...

  • Shabaka Hutchings has been thinking about the end a lot / Brinkwire
    Posted At: March 13, 2020

    "For there to be a change, there needs to be the end of what we want changed," he says, oracle-like, sipping a black coffee. "You've got groups like Extinction Rebellion telling us that if we don't radically change we will see the end of humanity. So how can we create something new to begin again?" Wearing all black and well over 6ft tall, the saxophonist tends to speak softly in swirling allusions, ...

  • The partnership between Shabaka Hutchings and South African musicians has produced an imaginative second album / The New York Times
    Posted At: March 12, 2020

    Shabaka and the Ancestors Are Making Their Own Jazz History. The partnership between the British saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings and a group of South African musicians has produced an imaginative second album. If jazz is looking to reinvent itself - or catch its breath and take stock of how much it already has in the past 10 years or so - the music of Shabaka and the Ancestors might be a good place to...

  • Shabaka Hutchings on masculinity in crisis, the end of humanity, and what it means to be British / The Guardian
    Posted At: March 11, 2020

    Shabaka Hutchings has been thinking about the end a lot. "For there to be a change, there needs to be the end of what we want changed," he says, oracle-like, sipping a black coffee. "You've got groups like Extinction Rebellion telling us that if we don't radically change we will see the end of humanity. So how can we create something new to begin again?" Wearing all black and well over 6ft tall, the ...

  • Shabaka & The Ancestors, We Are Sent Here By History makes JAZZIZ '10 Albums You Need to Know for March 2020'
    Posted At: March 5, 2020

    A deep study of the bebop and classical guitar masters; explosive liberation-oriented music; a previously unreleased collaboration between two legends of African music. All this and more in our March 2020 list of ten albums that you need to know about. We Are Sent Here By History  (Impulse!) is an exploration of the function of the griot of West Africa within a transatlantic modern-day cont...

  • Set to curate 'OneFest,' Shabaka Hutchings interviews with The Yorkshire Post
    Posted At: February 29, 2020

    Founded to support a community enterprise in Wiltshire, OneFest has grown in size, scope and location over the past nine years. At its heart is a social mission and its latest iteration is an ambitious twin city event, to be staged over successive Saturdays at The Leadmill in Sheffield and Earth in London, with themes of encouraging new talent and bridging the North-South divide. Its curator is the s...

  • The New Yorker's 'spring night-life preview' features Shabaka and the Ancestors@Bowery Ballroom
    Posted At: February 28, 2020

    Spring soon arrives with the experimental jazz of Shabaka and the Ancestors - Downtown. Shabaka Hutchings, a British-Barbadian saxophonist and clarinettist whose jazz fusion and experimentalism consistently prove breathtaking is set to release on March 13; Shabaka & The Ancestors Impulse! debut - We Are Sent Here By History. The band's breakout 2016 album, Wisdom of Elders, est...

  • Shabaka and the Ancestors 'We Are Sent Here By History' makes Evening Standard's '10 upcoming albums in March'
    Posted At: February 27, 2020

    Headphones at the ready, because March looks like it's going to be an absolute treat when it comes to new music. We've picked out 10 upcoming albums that we're particularly intrigued to hear, but there is plenty that we didn't include. Jazz visionary Shabaka Hutchings returns with his Ancestors collective, with an album-length "sonic poem", described as "a meditation on the fact of our coming extinct...

  • Shabaka and the Ancestors 'Go My Heart, Go To Heaven' makes San Diego Magazine's 'spring playlist'
    Posted At: February 26, 2020

    If you had told me 10 years ago that the most exciting and influential new music in 2020 would be jazz, well, it's not that I wouldn't have believed you, it just might have taken a leap of faith given how long since it's been part of pop music's conversation. Shabaka Hutchings is one of the most important figures in making that case, having released some amazing recent albums with Sons of Kemet and The C...

  • Inside this! issue of UNCUT, the cosmic torchbearer of London jazz; Shabaka Hutchings is round to talk about ecstatic improv
    Posted At: February 17, 2020

    Robert Plant, Karen Dalton, Elton John, Stephen Malkmus, Maria McKee, Shabaka Hutchings and Iggy & Bowie – plus our CD of the month's best music – all feature in the new Uncut, dated April 2020 and available to buy in UK shops from February 20. Inside the issue, you'll find: SHABAKA HUTCHINGS: The cosmic torchbearer of the London jazz scene, lynchpin of Sons Of Kemet, The Comet Is Coming ...

  • 'Joey Alexander' & 'Shabaka And The Ancestors' swap top spots on this week's Play MPE Top 10 - Jazz Downloads & Streams
    Posted At: February 7, 2020

    Joey Alexander, the Grammy-nominated jazz pianist, composer and bandleader has released his major label debut album, WARNA on Verve Records. The album is primarily a collection of reflective, moving new and original music by an experienced and confident musician. Translating as "color" from Alexander's native language of Bahasa, WARNA follows four Motéma Music albums that garner...

  • marlbank: track of the day is 'Go My Heart, Go To Heaven' from the new Shabaka and the Ancestors 'We Are Sent Here By History'
    Posted At: January 31, 2020

    'Go My Heart, Go To Heaven' from the griot themed We Are Sent Here By History from Shabaka and the Ancestors, is to be released on 13 March. Shabaka Hutchings, tenor saxophonist and clarinettist and titular head of the collective, in publicity calls the album to be released by Impulse to which the band are newly signed as a "meditation on the fact of our coming extinction as a species. It is...

  • Shabaka and The Ancestors announce new album 'We Are Sent Here By History' / The Vinyl Factory
    Posted At: January 31, 2020

    "What happens after that point when life as we know it can't continue." Jazz saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings is releasing a new album with his The Ancestors collective, We Are Sent Here By History, via Impulse! Records this March. Conceptualised as an hour-long sonic poem, with lyrics written and performed by Siyabonga Mthembu, We Are Sent Here By History explores African and Afro-Caribbean traditi...
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