Sons of Kemet @ Somerset House Summer Series (13 July)

Sons of Kemet, featuring saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, sit at the forefront of a new generation of London musicians upending expectations by introducing their own forms of irresistible polyrhythms and restless melodies.

While it’s fitting that the outfit’s acclaimed recent album, Your Queen Is a Reptile, dropped on legendary jazz imprint Impulse! Records (once home to John Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders), its restless kinetic energy, propelled by two drummers, tuba and sax, resists the legacy of American jazz standards, and seeks its own path with the intertwining influences of the Caribbean and London at its core.

Shortlisted for last year’s Mercury Music Prize, no other long player felt as prescient, provocative or ambitious in breaking down musical or indeed cultural boundaries, paying tribute to nine Black women, from Angela Davis to Doreen Lawrence, with a fierce combination of jazz, ska, dub and Afrobeat that also makes for irresistible dance music and a revelatory live experience.

Their music has been described as jazz for historically conscious party people. So expect to hear the band exploring a kaleidoscope of music. From Egyptian, through soulful jazz of 70s Ethiopia to dub-punk-Latin-jazz.

Come to be challenged both musically and politically because as Shaba himself said “The path to the decolonisation of the mind is to take into account what myths surround you.”

13 July, Sons of Kemet, Somerset House, WC2R 1LA, 7.30pm, £31.25 (includes £3.75 booking fee) Visit: https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/somerset-house-summer-series/sons-of-kemet