Sons of Kemet
Your Queen Is a Reptile
(Impulse!)

IN THE sleeve notes to this powerful praise-song album, London-born and Caribbean-bred saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings reflects upon the reality and symbolism of Windsor royalty while proudly affirming the remarkable and heroic women of his own black heritage.

He asserts: “We the immigrants, we the children of immigrants, we the diaspora, we the descendants of the colonised, we claim the right to question your obsolete systems, your racist symbols ... your monuments to genocide.

“We who built your palaces, we who paid blood into your banks, we who died in mines so your crown jewels may have the biggest diamonds, we claim our place at the table. And we say: 'Your history is not pure, your empire is not whole, your conscience is not clean, your money was printed in blood … Your queen is not our queen. She does not see us as human’.”