Hutchings grew up in Birmingham and Barbados, and studied music in London with tutelage from the Jazz Warriors’ Gary Crosby. Hutchings has led many projects, including The Comet Is Coming and the now-defunct Sons of Kemet. Shabaka and The Ancestors are built around a group of South African musicians after Hutchings’ travels to the country, and their 2020 Impulse! album “We Are Sent Here By History” saw the band combine Pan-African and Afro-Caribbean traditions in a heady avant-jazz brew.
