At Band On The Wall in Manchester: Shabaka

In his solo work, Shabaka’s music reflects a deepening focus on breath, embodiment, and personal authorship. His 2026 album Of The Earth, written, performed, produced, and mixed entirely by Shabaka, marks a pivotal moment in his artistic evolution. Where earlier projects explored collective improvisation and a withdrawal from familiar forms, this work represents integration - uniting rhythmic propulsion, textural depth, and melodic openness within a singular creative vision.

Drawing together the dance-driven energy associated with Sons of Kemet and The Comet Is Coming and the quieter, breath-led language of his recent solo explorations in Perceive It’s Beauty Acknowledge It’s Grace, his latest album, Of The Earth establishes Shabaka as a fully realised instrumentalist-producer. Created largely while travelling, the music is built from portable instruments and production tools, with looping rhythmic structures underpinning expansive choral melodies performed primarily on alto flute, alongside saxophone.

Shabaka’s practice has been profoundly shaped by years of flute study across traditions from Japan, the Americas, and beyond. This immersion transformed his understanding of resonance, phrasing, and melodic flow, and continues to inform his relationship with the saxophone, which he returned to with renewed clarity following an extended period away from the instrument. For the first time in his recorded output, Shabaka also incorporates his voice, using rap not as a stylistic departure but as another extension of rhythm, breath, and musical phrasing.

Across all his work, Shabaka’s music is driven by motion - physical, historical, and diasporic - tracing connections between movement, memory, and sound. Unconcerned with genre and grounded in intent, his practice continues to evolve as a deeply embodied form of creative expression.