In an almost entirely wordless opening night, the boundary-pushing quartet chose impulsive danceability over the political potency they’ve become known for. The result was a thrilling set that seemed to fly by in a matter of minutes.
Ialmost never saw UK jazz trailblazers Sons of Kemet in Manchester. It wasn’t due to Covid this time, but rather the fact that a two hour journey seems all the longer in prospect when fat snowflakes are falling in their millions outside your bedroom window. It was with some reluctance that I scraped the snow off the roof of my car and accepted the kind offering of blankets, a shovel and a bar of chocolate from my worried mother. Only by the time I was diving in and out of thick fog on the upper reaches of the M62 did I realise that this would be my first trip to Manchester completely alone. After a busy week at home, was the promise of somewhat well-known contemporary jazz band worth it?
There were two things that propelled me over the darkening Pennines and onto a delayed and noisy tram headed for the centre of the city. The first was the fact that Sons of Kemet are not your average modern jazz band (although in reality the UK jazz scene is so diverse, an ‘average’ band is near impossible to come across). The four-piece’s USP is without doubt their unique lineup: one tenor saxophone, one tuba and two drummers. And that’s it. Harmonic detail that may have been brought to the table by a guitar or keyboard is replaced by an abundance of percussion, with drummers Eddie Hick and Tom Skinner making full use of their arsenals of cowbells, shakers and cymbals. Tubist Theon Cross and ringleader saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings present a similarly intriguing instance of musical symbiosis; neither instrument takes precedent over the other. Sons of Kemet’s music simply has two concurrent melodies: one high and one low. To listen for hooks in one over the other is to miss the point completely.
The second reason was simply for the sake of adventure. Manchester still feels like it’s own exciting new world to me, and Gorilla is increasingly becoming a familiar haven tucked under the Oxford Road arches. As I walked in wide-eyed and feeling accomplished having completed my grand journey, memories of Nubya Garcia last November came flooding back. Just like I had done that night, I promptly purchased an obligatory half-pint of Coke, slid my way through the crowd (once again ending up miraculously close to the stage) and steeled myself for the several hours of standing up to come. A lack of support act made the wait feel long.
Sons of Kemet ended up sauntering onto stage with little fanfare, the 400-strong crowd greeting them more like old friends than disbelieving megafans. The two frontmen simply smiled, somewhat crudely taped vocal microphones as deep as they could into the end of their instruments and got to work. Plodding opener My Queen Is Doreen Lawrence eased the audience in gently, opening with a repeated kick drum pattern and crackling rimshots before Hutchings added his own tasteful saxophone melodies. There was a huge roar from the crowd when Theon Cross made his entry on tuba – an almighty entry at that, his majestic instrument so rich and powerful in sound it felt as if the ground was shaking beneath us. I found myself in the perfect position in the crowd for a faceful of tuba, the shining mass of muscular brass tubes and valves almost within touching distance. Cross later got into the habit of leaning forward with one boot on the monitor in front of me in such a way that his face was entirely blocked from view by the tuba’s enormous bell, leaving only his legs and his rapid fingers visible. Not in all of my recent gigs has a musician and their instrument looked so awe-inspiringly magnificent working in tandem.
Besides the lineup, the extraordinary thing about the evening’s performance was that the musicmaking started from Doreen Lawrence and hardly stopped until the four of them left the stage for good. As a result, it all began to feel like one, epic piece of jazz, with each song contributing to the general ebb and flow of the performance rather than existing as pieces of art in and of themselves. Pauses for applause felt like obligations to conform to concert traditions rather than necessary breaks, and over an hour had passed before Hutchings first spoke into the mic, albeit only to briefly introduce his bandmates during a song. To my surprise, Sons of Kemet’s pro-BLM, anti-institutional rage that had been so integral to their fiery latest album Black to the Future was entirely limited to their instruments. There was nothing of viscious beat poetry that peppers the album, but in its place we recieved a range of Afrobeat grooves that highlighted the fact that jazz – and a vast portion of modern culture and broader society – originates from the work of black cultures in Africa and around the world. In the end, the band’s key message of respect and understanding was conveyed perhaps with more eloquence than words could ever muster.
In truth, comment about Sons of Kemet’s thoughts on race relations or their feminist slant on black history (many of their songs are named after unsung black women throughout history), was only a minor detail of their performance. As the pumped-up group of fans around me in the front row demonstrated just a few minutes into the band’s set, dancing is a more immediate aspect of the band’s appeal. Early highlights Pick Up Your Burning Cross and the pulsating My Queen Is Albertina Sisulu whipped up a storm in the crowd, with Skinner’s kick drum pounding hard and heavy on every last downbeat. It was striking how often the repetitive, bass-heavy drums grooves resembled EDM or trance music in its ability to compel an audience to lose themselves in the beat. We all seemed to bounce up and down accordingly, the thumping kick drum and hypnotic bassline helping us dismiss any question of fatigue or boredom.
Watching exactly how Skinner and Hick deal with the logistics of two drum kits was fascinating. It seemed to me there tended to be a split between one drummer laying down the basics of a groove and the other adding tasteful splashes of snare and cymbals, although it wasn’t always obvious who had been delegated which role. Each drummer also had a slightly different set of gear at their disposal: Skinner was treated to the bigger, louder of the two kick drums, whilst it was Hick who had been given cowbell privileges. Regardless of the specifics, the end product was an immaculate, exceptionally detailed layer of percussion that both drove the two horn players to ecstatic highs and offered moments of peace and relaxation in the evening’s more thoughtful passages.
It was Theon Cross’s performance, however, that stole the show. A man that has seemingly devoted his life to proving once and for all how phenomenally underrated his instrument is, Cross was a force to be reckoned with, blasting out thundering bass melodies and sweating profusely under the effort demanded from him by the music. Every occasional squeal into the tuba’s extremely loud and surprisingly alarming upper register – sounding somewhere between a revving motorbike and charging elephant – was a thrill that illicited a cheer from the audience, especially when the sound was unleashed at unexpected moments of relative quietness. A three-minute solo piece performed by Cross in the middle of the set showed him at the peak of his powers and in total, virtuosic command of his instrument.
Cross let out a coy smile and dried his sweat-drenched face as the crowd cheered in enthusiastic approval of his solo before beginning another piece completely alone. This time his performance blossomed into the throbbing My Queen Is Harriet Tubman, a blistering, relentlessly volatile piece that remains the band’s best song to date. It took genuine restraint to stop myself from singing along to every last squeal of Hutchings’ sax line which I had learnt by heart – I sensed from the largely quiet dancers around me that screaming along wasn’t the done thing at jazz gigs. Instead I found myself jumping up and down with glee to a tumult of cowbell as both Hutchings and Cross fired off one killer riff after another. Hutchings, bandana-clad and ready for battle with his sinewy biceps bulging from the sides of a sleeveless shirt, ruthlessly attacked every last note like a boxer fighting for the world title. Cross bobbed up and down just a couple of metres away from me, cheeks puffing under the strain of an almighty bass line as Hick swayed along in time behind him, his remarkable dexterity on percussion filling the room with noise. About a dozen gigs in, this surely ranks as my most thrilling live music experience to date.
From there, it was a victory lap for the quartet who were clearly enjoying an audience that would gladly stomp their feet at every last thump of Skinner’s kick drum. There were moments of delightful experimentation – Hutchings took to what looked like a recorder at one point (an atenteben would be my guess after a bit of Googling) and Cross added atmosphere to My Queen Is Nanny of the Maroons with some conch playing. Frustratingly neither instrument had been amplified at all, so the effect was more of a mood-setter rather than an attention-grabber. Nonetheless, it added a needed element of light and shade to the evening’s performance. To Never Forget the Source turned out to be a slightly perculiar closer as one of the more downtempo and less remarkable numbers from the band’s latest album. The choice to use an improvised solo piece from Hutchings as the encore was stranger still. His playing was nonetheless mesmerising – a song with a bassline, melody and percussion all conjured up by one man and his saxophone – but it was far from the crowd-pleasing finale I had come to expect.
It was barely 10pm by the time I left Gorilla, but there was a sense among the crowd that we had just experienced something special. Someone next to me remarked that the 90 minutes had flown by. It was true that with virtually no speaking let alone the inter-generational racial hatred I had anticipated, the gig had run like a particularly good concept album: seamless, beautifully crafted and with a vague sense of a journey. Like all the best gigs, I took home a resounding feel of awe – both at the incredible musicians I had come face to face with and the fantastic pieces of music they had brought to life. The long journey had been undoubtedly worth it in the end. What’s more, I didn’t even need to use my shovel.