Review: Sons of Kemet --Your Queen is a Reptile

Sons of Kemet --Your Queen is a Reptile Review by Andre Spencer Anderson-Thompson | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
How many of you know the legacy of Anna Julia Cooper? How about Yaa Asantewaa? In a time, where colonialism, imperialism, and racism still haunt our world the British jazz group, Sons of Kemet, revamp jazz with a social consciousness and a sound that blends drums, saxophone, tuba, and spoken word into a sonic acuteness of awareness and aspiration.
The name of the band, Sons of Kemet, reveals that social consciousness, Kemet being the ancient name of Egypt before colonization. Furthermore, the song titles on their latest release, Your Queen is a Reptile (2018) exposes both historical recognition and a tribute to otherwise invisible people.
Track one is entitled, ´My Queen is Ada Eastman,´ who is the bandleader, Shabaka Hutchings great grandmother. Other titles include: ´My Queen is Harriet Tubman,´ ‘My Queen is Anna Julia Cooper,’ ‘My Queen is Angela Davis,’ ‘My Queen is Yaa Asantewaa’ to name a few. A recent Guardian article entitled, “The British jazz explosion: meet the musicians rewriting the rulebook,” sheds light on a cast of musicians that are breaking barriers in music and deserve attention and credit. Jazz, as a genre, feels dated and old. However, in that article we see the evolution and the collaboration of the music that is becoming mainstream.
In addition Sons of Kemet exposes the political engagement and forward thinking the music has always had. Through great creative giants like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra, this musical form has always been breaking barriers. Sons of Kemet continues that legacy in a time where millennials hashtag, ‘woke,’ of ‘beingwoke,’ and government, policies, and power structures still dehumanize, contaminate, and affect the lives of the least of these.
In a interview on BBC 6, legendary radio broadcaster and DJ, Gilles Peterson, talks to Hutchings about the new album. Echoing sentiments from renowned African American author Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man), who defines “the blues” as, “an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness” Hutchings explains to Peterson that his music, which is considered as jazz, is “expressive music, music that has an undermining of the African American tradition, but it is music that reflects how we interact with our surroundings musically.”
Sons of Kemet consists of the Hutchings, sax and clarinet, Tom Skinner and Seb Rochford, drums, and Theon Cross, tuba. In the same interview, Hutchings describes the inspiration of the album title, My Queen is a Reptile, comes from a “Sun Ra quote that says when communities are oppressed the first thing they loose is the ability to envision their own mythological structures, I took that further and said if you want to achieve mental liberation or mental decolonization you have to image your own mythological structures, your own elements of reality, what are the stories you tell yourself…”
This dynamic, intelligent, and musically gifted group definitely provides “new stories.” In the opening track, “My Queen is Ada Eastman,” the instrumentation instantaneously awakens you, opens your ears, and provokes your mind. Then the spoken word artist articulately and profoundly commends, “Still here still grinding /Hustling and striving / In these dark times these dark / Minds I'm a diamond / Big Ben is still chiming / They don't wanna see us smiling / They wanna keep us grimy / But my politics still lively…” The song’s perfect harmonic instrumentation is already pleasing to hear, but the lyrics add the political awareness that shows that their music is fighting against and exposing the ugly truths of colonialism, imperialism, and racism as well as telling their own stories, their own reality.
Hutchings proclaims to Gilles Peterson that his intentional song titles are named in honor of women, which are against ‘patriarchy.’ In addition, he also considers and regards ‘hereditary privilege' as a source of inspiration because who is to say “my queen is superior to yours…” In this time, in the era of Donald Trump and Theresa May, Sons of Kemet and their latest album, My Queen is a Reptile is essential. If anything it will allow you to be interested in learning about Mamie Phipps Clark, Harriet Tubman, Anna Julia Cooper, Angela Davis, Nanny of the Maroons, Yaa Asantewaa, Albertina Sisulu, and Doreen Lawrence.
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Andre Anderson-Thompson was raised in Sacramento, California. He attended Morehouse College where he received a Bachelor’s degree in English. He continued his education at the University of Chicago to receive a Master in Arts in Teaching and began his teaching career in Chicago. He continues as an international educator, first in Tanzania and he currently resides and teaches in Bogota, Colombia.