Moor Mother sparks an evening of surprise and subversion at Barbican

Black music as a form of subversion is very much alive tonight. An evening that starts solo and ends ensemble has a strong common thread. Sounds are pulled from both unconventional and conventional sources in left-field ways.

In a quite dazzling first half South African cellist Abel Selaocoe astounds the audience by creating his own orchestral universe from subterranean throat singing, sublime folk melodies, looped percussive clicks, dense chords and a finely wrought touch on the wood and strings of his instrument that makes it hum like a pan pipe.

It is not so much what he is playing as how he is doing what he was not taught to. In the second half an international avant-garde sextet led by American spoken word artist Moor Mother also produces several moments of magic that stem from an ages-old ability to see sound in any object.

Senegalese percussionist Dudu Kouaté, last seen in London with the mighty Art Ensemble Of Chicago (as was Mother) draws beguiling textures from his wide array of drums and devices, the highpoint of which is the dreamscape enchantment of bottles dropping rhythmically in a calabash full of water.

Trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, vocalists Alya Al-Sultani and Elaine Mitchener, bass guitarist Farida Amadou, drummer Edward Wakili-Hick and pianist Pat Thomas all assert their personalities with as much verve, as the group breaks down to small units and scales up to full strength throughout the set.

Moor Mother, declaiming verse from her latest project Jazz Codes, a deep dive into the music’s well of creativity amid a pit of venality, is a focal point, but the changing shape and colour of the musical palette also holds the attention. When Mother launches into a duet with Thomas, who takes stride on a trip that James P. Johnson would have called modernistic, the energy is ecstatic.

Mother gets the blues, envisions the future as the place where we all have to come together and imagines a time when you can ‘kick the King down the fuckin’ steps’, words that might bring a bout of indigestion to Coronation chicken and the Public Order Act.