SAN FRANCISCO — It’s a rare concert that makes you rethink everything you thought you knew about the tuba. And yet, English jazz quartet Sons of Kemet did precisely that with a sold-out performance at The Independent on Monday night. This isn’t your father’s marching band. The four-man operation blew minds and the doors off the joint with an explosive 90-minute performance—the first of a two-night stand.

As the concert began, Saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings stood onstage, his clothes a patchwork of fabrics, and conjured delicate wails from his saxophone over the the throbbing groove anchored by the band’s two drummers, Tom Skinner and Eddie Hick. The venue was briefly overrun by a herd of extremely tiny but very pungent skunks as Hutchings unfurled sheets of sound from his saxophone. But when the bowel-rumbling bass notes from Theon Cross’ tuba dropped, the party really got started.

Sons of Kemet managed to sound familiar and mysterious at the same time. The band’s sonic alchemy contained a number of standard ingredients: Coltrane-y bebop, exuberant New Orleans funeral jazz and fiery Caribbean rhythms that felt like a 12-pack of Red Bull, heart palpitations and all. The mystery derived in part from Cross’ tuba work, which somehow managed to sound heavier and funkier than a Bootsy Collins bass line, while maintaining a wonderful breathiness that packed a lot of butt-shaking oomph into each oompa.

At times, Hutchings’ saxophone sounded like an overdriven electric guitar, at others his horn echoed with spacey delay. At one point Hutchings wowed the audience with an extended solo on some sort of wooden flute.

Sons of Kemet perform at The Independent in San Francisco on April 11, 2022.

The band’s lack of onstage banter added to the evening’s mystery. There was no small talk, no song introductions. In fact, Sons of Kemet played for 15 minutes straight before the audience heard the first moment of silence during the set. The band’s interaction with attendees was almost entirely musical as, like experienced guides, the quartet offered a tour of music’s outer realm.

A couple of the songs bobbed with a slight reggae feel. Others felt vaguely Middle Eastern with the horns playing exotic scales that merged and diverged with a powerful push and pull. Synthesizer sounds of an unknown origin set off one song, which then featured the pair of drummers offering up a chaotic, vertigo-inducing syncopation, bathed onstage in indigo lights.

About halfway through the concert, Oakland trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire emerged onstage in a fedora and long blue coat and joined the band for a mellow number in the vein of Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue.” As the trumpeter left the stage, cheering drowned out Hutchings’ introduction.

Later in the set, Cross stretched out for a roughly seven-minute tuba solo, during which the perpetually bouncing musician coaxed the sound of everything from a synthesizer to a mouth harp, a harmonica, and Tibetan throat singing from his bulky brass instrument. After his solo, Cross spun gracefully in a circle with his tuba to the crowd’s delight.

After briefly introducing the band, Hutchings ended the set with a molasses-like ballad that featured the syrupy sounds of his saxophone, while Cross joined on percussion.

After a short break, the quartet returned to play a song from its 2018 record, Your Queen is a Reptile. The crowd pulsed and swayed with kinetic energy as the band finished, thanked the audience and left the stage.

Earlier in the evening, Brooklyn’s Melanie Charles fired the crowd up with her powerful singing, a raft a jazz samples she manipulated on stage like a DJ and some funky beats courtesy of Oakland drummer Ruby Price. Charles got early arrivers going immediately as she appeared onstage in a brightly colored dress and sang—un-amplified and a capella: “Won’t you be my friend?” Charles and Price ran through a dynamic set of songs that rose from quiet and subdued to near blast-beat intensity. Charles offered up songs from her 2021 album, Y’all Don’t (Really) Care About Black Women. During her last song, Charles was impressive when she pulled out a flute and matched Price’s rhythm with a heavy riff.

Follow writer David Gill at Twitter.com/songotaku.