Sons of Kemet was a British jazz group formed by Shabaka Hutchings, Oren Marshall, Seb Rochford, and Tom Skinner.[1]Theon Cross replaced Marshall on tuba after the first album, and Eddie Hick replaced Rochford on drums after the third. The band disbanded in 2022.[2]
The group used saxophone and clarinet (Hutchings), tuba (Cross), and two drummers (Skinner, Hick) to make their music and played a mixture of jazz, rock, Caribbean folk, and African music.[3]
On 9 September 2013, Sons of Kemet released their debut album Burn, which received the Arts Desk Album of the Year 2013 and a nomination for Gilles Peterson's Album of the Year. Their next album Lest We Forget What We Came Here to Do received the same nomination for the year 2015. The group won Best Jazz Act at the 2013 MOBO Awards.[4]
On 14 May 2021, the fourth album by Sons of Kemet, Black to the Future, was released. Hubert Adjei-Kontoh, writing for Pitchfork, described the album as a "propulsive mind- and body-moving record",[6] while Kitty Empire writing for The Guardian described it as "an eloquent dance between anger and joy" and praised the lyric writing and instrumentals of the album.[7]
On June 1, 2022, they posted that after the current run of shows, "we will be closing this chapter of the band's life for the foreseeable future."[8][2]
