Shabaka Hutchings returns with Shabaka and the Ancestors, one of the many bands that he has been making waves in. This song opens with atonal swirls reminiscent of Herbie Hancock’s avant-garde Mwandishi era. That music is accompanied by the cries of both babies and other animals. The vocalist sets the tone with spoken lines like, “Burned the mortgage, burned the student loans… An act of destruction became creation.” Eventually this chaos dissolves into a more structured jazz song with a refrain that appears throughout the album: “We are here / Cause history called.” Clearly this project looks to the past as a source of inspiration to liberate ourselves. Let’s heed that call!
Freeing Music 