There is an ocean of jazz history, knowledge and experience between percussionist and composer Kahil El’Zabar and saxophonist David Murray. Together, they represent a lineage of jazz that audiences rarely have the opportunity to experience firsthand.
El’Zabar spent his early days in music playing with legends like Gene ‘Jug’ Ammons and Cannonball Adderley before joining the great Dizzy Gillespie’s band. Murray played with giants like Max Roach, Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner.
This summer they embarked on their We Be Free Tour, which will conclude with a performance at the Houston Museum of African American Culture on Friday, July 10. The event will be filmed and archived by Ice House Radio and will serve as the musical event for the exhibit Bayou City Stewards: Celebrating America From Our Perspective.
“When David and I started out in the early ‘70s, we were the youngest of our peers and now, 50 years later, we are the oldest and so if people ever wanted to see something that was like Coltrane Quartet or Thelonious Monk or the avant-garde of the ‘60s we are two of the last living that actually came through all of that,” says El’Zabar.
We Be Free is a fitting title encompassing their approach to creation and some of the issues in the world today.
“If we are looking at the times and questioning where we are going as a society we see the advance of technology. We see the sophistication of consumerism and its manipulating of public opinion and public taste. The idea of intelligence and freedom of speech become very important to have a counter voice to what the noise is consuming us to so if there ever was a time to be free, it is now,” says El’Zabar, adding, “We the artist must be free for the community to be free.”
The two met on a basketball court in El’Zabar’s hometown of Chicago in the mid ‘70s and their connection was immediate and long-lasting. They have released multiple projects together, most recently a live album recorded in China titled Spirit Groove: Golden Sea Duo In Shenzhen.
“It’s so many parallels,” says El’Zabar when asked about their special connection to one another. “We both have families that were in the Holiness Faith, were child musicians, are studied in various styles within the jazz genre and we both played with many iconic players.”
Listening to the duo, their interplay feels almost spiritual, each musician instinctively complementing the other’s strengths.
“We are exponents of the experimental generation of the music and we both have a strong rhythm and blues sensibility cognizant of our heritage. Those things blended together bring us to a kind of telepathic symbiosis but we don’t want people to ever not realize that we are both extremely schooled and technical musicians who are able to be free with our interpretations.”
For El’Zabar, the push to go from a young ambitious player to furthering his education and total understanding of musical theory came from his time with Dizzy Gillespie.
He describes the great sense of pride that he felt coming home to Chicago to play with the jazz master in front of his friends and family. He was shocked when Gillespie offered his parents some advice.
“He looks at my parents and says, ‘This mother fucker needs to go back to school.’ and I was like, go back to school? I’m playing with you, you played with Bird. I was with Jug, then Cannonball then I got to you. What do I need to go to school for?”
Gillespie told El’Zabar, “You have a leadership sensibility that needs to have a voice to technically relate to the ideas that are in you so that you can translate to others and unless you get the technical facility and harmony and theory to do that you will be limited.”
El’Zabar took Gillespie’s advice, studying at Kennedy King College and Malcolm X College in Chicago before earning his undergraduate degree at Lake Forest College. He later served for a decade as chairman of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, where he had attended classes as a teenager, and eventually earned a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary arts.
It was during his undergraduate studies that he was offered a grant to study pantomime in France with Marcel Marceau. He instead created an opportunity to use that grant money to study music in Ghana. When he returned his supportive yet concerned parents asked him what he would do to make a living.
“I got this idea the year I spent in Ghana,” he told his parents. “I want to focus on the pentatonic scale versus the chromatic scale and show that the so-called primitive perspectives on art are as sophisticated or can be and so I’m going to have a band with no piano or guitar or any pedal chromatic tone instrument but use horns and my percussion to convey a sophisticated way to convey my music.”
His skeptical father warned him that he would never make a living. This concept began his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble and about ten years later while on tour with his father in tow, El’Zabar overheard some encouragement from his father.
“He called my mother and said, “Girl, they actually listen to this fool’s music.’ It was probably the proudest moment of my life when I heard him put his hand over the phone so I wouldn’t hear it but I did and he said to my mother, ‘Baby, I think he’s gonna be okay.’”
It is this ability to bridge the past with the present, the primitive heartbeat of humanity with the unexplored sounds of the future that has led El’Zabar to his impressive accomplishments and multitude of recordings.
“I was able to show the philosophy of the AACM. The mantra is ‘ancient to the future a power stronger than itself’ so if we can use past history and the beginnings in order to show the potential of what we can become there’s faith in that which has happened and faith in what we don’t know yet that can happen.”
Jazz has always possessed the power to challenge convention without using words.
“I think it is the emotional ethics of participation, so what happens in jazz is not only the music, it is the lifestyle orientation to attempt an epiphany to experiment with known information with that hope of new possibility. When you think about the turn of the century in the 1920 anthropologist and historians have defined it as the jazz age and it wasn’t just about the music.”
Jazz and philosophy are inseparable to El’Zabar and much like the music, creation of any kind cannot be limited. His dedication to exploring the many avenues of art and creation has gained him a wide list of titles including bandleader, arts curator, educator, vocalist, poet, composer, fashion designer and being knighted in France.
“Talking to Dizzy, which I did all the time, I’d ask him about Bird and their conversations. Their conversations were about politics, science-everything, and so I grew up that way. I’ve tried to translate that to other artists not just musicians.”
Kahil EL’Zabar and David Murray will perform on Friday, July 10 at 7 p.m at the Houston Museum of African American Culture, 4807 Caroline. For more information visit kahilelzabaris.com
