Following the critically acclaimed 2013 album Burn, Sons Of Kemet have just dropped their somophore album, Lest We Forget What We Came Here To Do, last week. Shabaka Hutchings, the prodigious clarinettist, saxophonist and composer at the helm of this vibrant polyrhythmic quartet, conceived the album as a continuation of their debut work’s themes, describing it as ‘a meditation on the Caribbean diaspora in Britain’.
‘The realisation dawned after I’d started writing these tunes,’ explained Hutchings. ‘I was thinking of my grandmother’s generation from the Caribbean, who came here to work incredibly hard, and also what it means to be a black person in Britain now, especially a generation of youth experiencing high unemployment, and those elements of society who are not always easy to see.’

Make sure you nab a copy of Lest We Forget What We Came Here To Do if you haven’t yet. And to whet your appetite, here’s two gems from the album, the opening track ‘In Memory Of Samir Awad’ and ‘In The Castle Of My Skin’. The latter comes with a fitting video featuring pantsula dancers from the Indigenous Dance Academy. The video was shot in Johannesburg and directed by Lebogang Rasethaba.

Lest We Forget What We Came Here To Do is out now via Naim Jazz Records.