In 2023, jazzman
Shabaka Hutchings announced he would be shelving his saxophone for the foreseeable future. A consequential decision, it meant the end of his
Sons of Kemet and
the Comet Is Coming, two of the three groups that established his reputation. In November 2022, he foreshadowed that assertion with
Afrikan Culture, recorded mostly solo on shakuhachi, flute, and clarinet. He followed it in 2023 with the mysterious 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 Gelder's studio in New Jersey in 2022. Unlike anything he's released yet,
Shabaka uses wits and intuition to summon this music up from his unconscious. He's 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, and vocalists.
"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-Ferguson's strings. On "Insecurities,"
Moses Sumney's elastic falsetto engages the flute in seamless improvisation with
Overton's 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
Shabaka's flute line by line -- and electronicist
Chris Sholar on the poignant "Body to Inhabit." "I'll Do Whatever You Want" is the closest thing to a fully improvised jam here. It showcases
Andre 3000's Teotihuacan drone flute alongside
Shabaka's shakuhachi, a Rhodes Chroma by
Floating Points,
Dave Okumu's guitar, and
Herbert's and
Spalding's basses, with
Gilmore's drums and
Nino's percussion framing a wordless vocal from
Laraaji. "Living" offers transcendent holism as
Shabaka's Slavic svirel (a Russian flute) and
Eska Mtungwazi's 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 Swaminathan's 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.
Shabaka's 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
Overton's glissando harp playing. There isn't 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 artist's pursuit of creative excellence as an aesthetic practice with a spiritual dimension. ~ Thom Jurek
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