Music Monday: Shabaka, Lloyd, and Fowler

About five years ago, when we published a little book called Punk Archaeology, my buddy Scott Moore included an essay titled “Don’t Stop Pottery Reading.” It featured a little reflection on the role of music in archaeological work and his ill-fated decision to purchase a Microsoft Zune rather than an iPod.

Like most archaeologists, I listen to music while I work in the storerooms, doing data management tasks, or writing. Music helps me concentrate amid the bustle of collaboration in the sometimes crowded storeroom and tempers the sometimes frustrating work associated with corralling various forms of information into a coherent argument.

(Listening to music during excavation is another matter entirely. I tend to believe that hearing what’s going on while digging is an important part of being able to make good archaeological decisions. Experienced excavators can often hear soil changes before they see them and, of course, there is always the issue of safety especially when working in close quarters with people wielding picks.)

This season, I’ve been enjoying Shabaka Hutchings album Shabaka. He’s long been a favorite of mine for his remarkable range of styles. He sounds as at home playing in more traditional settings with his group Shabaka and the Ancestors as he does playing in with electronics in The Comet is Coming or in the London Jazz idiom of Sons of Kemet. But even this range didn’t quite prepare me for Shabaka.

Shabaka is contemplative, ever so slightly heavy, and deep. It trades the ecstatic sounds of Sons of Kemet and Shabaka and the Ancestors, for more a more meditative sound that suits Hutchings’s capacity for understated lyricism and his attention to tone and sound. This is a fantastic album and one that will remain in my playlist for years to come.

I’ve paired this album with Sangam by Charles Lloyd, Zakir Hussain, and Eric Harland. Hussain is a tabla player whose intricate rhythms and tones create a tapestry against which Lloyds famous tone can dance. Eric Harland somehow manages to keep everything together. I never really liked the idea of “world music” which often (it seems to me) stood in a euphemism for musical forms or instruments detached from their cultural context. This album avoids this pitfall.

Finally, I’ve had never heard of Chad Fowler before I started listening to his recent duo with Matthew Shipp. It’s pretty great (and it will be included in my “duos” play list!). Fowler is fiery and Shipp is elegant. Fowler is adventurous and, on this album at least, Shipp anchors Fowler’s flights of fancy. Fowler is deeply committed and Shipp feels just a bit more restrained than usual here. It feels deliberate, like he’s holding back to allow Fowler the space he needs to go all in.

This album is not good for writing or thinking. It demands that I take a break, eat a tiny halloumopita, and think about what I’m doing with my life.