On Saturday, 25 February, Shabaka and The Ancestors and friends took over the ex-Women’s Prison yard on Constitution Hill in Johannesburg. The Dig ZA did an excellent job of hosting the event – with funky lighting, a beautifully designed stage, food and drink, a record shop and loads of hay furniture and benches.
Directly preceding The Ancestors, who were there in celebration of the 50th anniversary of a very special album , was Mamthug, who sound-curated up a storm of rhythm and funk, the crowd whooping and boogying along. Hutchings spent his formative years in Barbados but got into the London jazz scene as a student, quickly making a name for himself as a gifted musician. Coming and going to Cape Town during a romantic relationship he started jamming with South African jazz musos and found a special chemistry, specifically with Jozi’s Amandla Freedom Ensemble and drummer Tumi Mogorosi. A different romance, and The Ancestors, were born.
The trombonist enters a New Orleans groove, in reverie; later an extended jam feels like a jovial thunderstorm, Mthembu’s vocals shafts of sunlight through the tumult.by Count Ossie and The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari, the album that inspired this concert, focuses lyrically on abduction and displacement of people in the slave trade while celebrating, through music, the power of people in spiritual awareness.