Re-membering

Sculptural Bust from a Reliquary Ensemble, Fang-Betsi tribe, central Africa, 19th or early 20th century, Metropolitan Museum, New York

There have been some intriguing developments, associated with the lineage of John and Alice Coltrane, on the margins of jazz. I became aware of one of them in 2021, when I heard the album ‘Promises’, recorded by Sam Shepherd, under the name ‘Floating Points’, in collaboration with the celebrated Pharoah Sanders (who once played with John Coltrane) and the London Symphony Orchestra. Sanders had become increasingly interested in ‘spiritual jazz’, and as Shepherd has said, ‘Hearing Pharoah merely breathe through his saxophone felt like a portal into his soul’. It was to be Sanders’s last recording, and Shabaka Hutchings, considered to be the finest English saxophonist of his generation, took his place at a live performance of the work in 2023.

Not long afterwards, I came across the music of Thandi Ntuli, a young jazz pianist and singer from South Africa. Although she had released earlier records, it was with ‘Blk Elijah & the Children of Meroë’, a sprawling set of stylistically varied songs and compositions, that she began to be noticed. Ntuli has described the album as a story about ‘the mystery of awakening, re-birth or re-MEMBERING’, a journey from ‘Self’ to ‘Truth’, which takes place in the protagonist’s inner world. Each character evokes a different aspect of a complex ‘Inner-verse’, which itself reflects aspects of the outer world. Blk Elijah, for instance, who is more of a presence than a person, embodies the archetype of the ‘Divine Mother’ and stands in for the protagonist's highest and most authentic Self; she is the catalyst of awakening, a guide who gently leads all the Children of Meroë back to wholeness. In contrast, Ntuli’s most recent album, ‘Rainbow Revisited’, is a simpler and more reticent affair, mainly featuring piano and voice, which was recorded with the help and participation of Carlos Niño, the influential American multi-instrumentalist. The music is spare, reduced, somewhat akin to that of the legendary pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, and ‘a masterclass in the eloquent potential of the solo, a quiet storm of expression of Ntuli’s new frontier of South African jazz’, according to The Guardian’s reviewer.

The personal connections between these musicians, as well as their interest in Africa, are close; in 2016, Shabaka Hutchings, a good friend of Carlos Niño, worked with Nandi Ntuli and a group of South African musicians on a record called ‘Wisdom of Elders’, in a style that he has called ‘Afro-futurism’, which reflected the influence of Sun Ra as well as African culture. Then, following his contribution to the live performance of ‘Promises’ with Floating Points, Hutchings played what he announced at the time as his last concert on the saxophone, a revival of John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ at the ICA in London. Since reinventing himself and now known simply as ‘Shabaka’, he has also learnt to play a selection of wooden and bamboo flutes – the Japanese shakuhachi, the Andean quena, the Slavic svirel, the Brazilian pífano – featuring them all on his album ‘Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace’, a record that explores the place where jazz meets a New Age aesthetic, a world not far from that of ‘Promises’.

Both Sam Shepherd and André 3000, whose ‘New Blue Sun’ is another example of ambient jazz flute music, as well as New Age pioneer Laraaji, contributed to Shabaka’s recording, on which he exchanged his characteristic intensity for a more introspective and fluid mood, one that suggests ‘mindfulness’ and spirituality. Replying to an interviewer’s suggestion that there might be a connection between meditative breathing exercises and his flute-playing, Shabaka agreed. ‘That’s a really important part of my practice. It’s watching how I progress through the course of one breath, how I come from silence to the full expression of the note, and then back down to nothing. My constant battle with the flutes is to try and avoid making them an extension of what I was doing on the saxophone. The music I’d been making with the saxophone and in the bands was the ultimate exposition of speaking outwardly. But then there’s an inner voice that tells me what needs to happen is a change in texture, a change in emotional or sonic landscape’.

Another guest on Shabaka’s record is the pianist Nduduzo Makhathini, who also explores spiritual and metaphysical themes in his music. On ‘uNomkhubulwane’, his third album, Makhathini pays homage to the Zulu goddess of that name, ‘a regulator of nature, light and fertility’. This is not a casual reference; Makhathini, apart from being a striking pianist, is an initiated sangoma, a shaman and healer, and he combines these roles by using improvisation and ritual strategies to evoke supernatural voices and transcend conventional musical boundaries. His previous two albums were suffused with the ardent spirit of John Coltrane, but on ‘uNomkhubulwane’ he uses a lighter touch, arranging the music into three movements - ’Libations,’ ‘Water Spirits,’ and ‘Inner Attainment’ - that are intended to represent stages of collective mourning, restoration, and transcendence. The suite emerged from a ‘mother song’ he received during his initiation as a healer, which he said integrated ancestral memory and metaphysical guidance; according to Makhathini, jazz is fundamentally African, with rhythm at its heart; as a consequence, the incorporation of African influences into jazz improvisation is essential to ‘re-membering’, one of the words Thali Ntuli used, perhaps coincidentally, to describe ‘Blk Elijah & the Children of Meroë’. The ‘Inner Attainment’ section of ‘uNomkhubulwane’, perhaps the most melodic and arresting part of the album, ends with a solo piece, ‘Ithemba’, that reflects contentment and tranquillity, but it is only one aspect of a complex and divergent process of recollection.

For further exploration:

‘Promises’ full album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn8x0QbN4f8

Floating Points, ‘Promises’: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/floating-points-pharoah-sanders-the-promises/

https://www.thandintuli.com/

Blk Elijah and the Children of Meroë: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lNhswhPBQ6A-I792HxD_Ko0Vt1zTGdyAw

‘Rainbow revisited’: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/10/thandi-ntuli-with-carlos-nino-rainbow-revisited-review

https://www.shabakahutchings.com/#/

Interview with Shabaka: https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/stories/shabaka-hutchings-interviewed-its-like-the-ghost-of-the-saxophone/

Interview with nNduduzo Makhathini: https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2024/09/nduduzo-makhathini-interview.html

https://www.nduduzomakhathini.com/

Image on index page: detail of Mbuti textile