Sons Of Kemet, Joshua Idehen - Field Negus (Audio)

Before listening to Black to the Future, Sons of Kemet's fourth album, reading the track list first is recommended. Bandleader Shabaka Hutchings sequenced it as a poetic statement to accurately and aesthetically foreshadow the record's narrative, thereby framing the context for its music. Sons of Kemet remains a quartet with Hutchings on reeds and woodwinds, Theon Cross on tuba, and Edward Wakili-Hick and Tom Skinner on drums and percussion; they are joined here by a slew of vocal and instrumental guests. Black to the Future carries the torch of musical polemic from Max Roach's We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, Archie Shepp's Attica Blues, and Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson's It's Your World to Linton Kwesi Johnson's Bass Culture, Rip Rig & Panic's Attitude, and Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Sons of Kemet address the Black experience from colonial slavery to Black Lives Matter's international ascendancy amid the struggle for self-determination while erasing artificial boundaries between jazz, dub, highlife, Afrobeat, calypso, rap, funk, and soul, without sterile posturing.