The Brooklyn Rail

Kahil El’Zabar is a composer, arranger, and performer who has led the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble for fifty years, a major feat. The band has changed members and configurations often over the decades—it is currently a trio, with guests dropping in and out—but throughout its history it has been animated and driven forward by a singular vision, an integration of Black vernacular music and African-leaning instrumentation, anchored by its leader’s distinctive and passionate approach to percussion.

In addition to his modest drum kit, El’Zabar makes use of the haunting sound of the kalimba, various hand drums, as well as a string of cowrie shells and a half-tambourine strapped to his ankle and foot. What he produces from this simple set-up is astonishing, a roiling, surging stream of sound that pulses with life. He adds to that his voice, which ranges from dry and laconic to stentorian and soaring. At certain sanctified moments, he employs this as another percussion element. It’s less scat singing than a vocal interpretation of his percussion playing. The music seems to inhabit him. This personal transfiguration is central to his art; he doesn’t just play the music, he embodies it.

As an arranger, El’Zabar turns an unconventional trio—without piano, guitar, or bass, as in more conventional groupings—and uses it to maximal effect. That removal of the “middle” of the sound somehow frees the music, allowing it to stretch out and open up. The space it occupies feels light, making it better able to absorb the weave of instrumental lines. Miles Davis once advised Herbie Hancock, “Don’t play the butter notes”—the fills and trills that are used to embellish music, but can also weigh it down. I don’t hear any butter notes coming from this band.

Most of all, the music of the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble seems to tap into a vast spiritual reservoir. El’Zabar has performed with great leaders in this idiom like Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp, who pioneered what is sometimes called spiritual jazz, and he shares with them a soul-deep commitment to music that communicates at a very high level. Like kemetic meditation, it helps provide access to higher states of consciousness, using trance-like groove and root-down intensity as its mode of transport.

El’Zabar started out as a student of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM) in Chicago, a collective that has been a major outlet for creative, improvisation-driven Black music. His own group seemed to grow out of the Artistic Heritage Ensemble, itself an AACM-derived group led by composer Phil Cohran. (Interestingly, this band had guitarist Pete Cosey before his time with Miles, as well as several future members of Earth, Wind & Fire, one of whom—Maurice White—carried over the original group’s use of electrified kalimba to brilliant effect.). El’Zabar has spoken of how the founding of the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble followed a logic rooted in a certainty that Black creativity exists along a continuum, and its disparate aspects and expressions can and should all be accessed. His own impulse emerged to strip away extra layers, the better to let core elements interact and be heard.

In his early recordings, his bandmates were trombonist/conga player Joseph Bowie (leader of the great band Defunkt and brother of Art Ensemble of Chicago co-founder Lester) and saxophonist Edward Wilkerson, Jr. (later replaced by Ernest "Khabeer" Dawkins). He went on to become a regular collaborator with David Murray, as well as scoring side gigs with musical giants ranging from Dizzy Gillespie to Stevie Wonder. Through the years, he managed to keep the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble together, or at least regularly reuniting, a huge challenge in a society that practically forces musicians to work in multiple contexts just to get by. Along the way, he made recordings with Billy Bang, Malachi Favors, Hamiet Bluiett, and other giants on the scene. The current incarnation of the band features two astonishing mainstays, trumpeter Corey Wilkes and baritone sax player Alex Harding, sometimes supplemented by strings. These musicians do a magnificent job of extending El’Zabar’s original conception of the band, with their playing always carrying a welcome gravity.

One night in February, I had a chance to see the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble at the Brooklyn School of Music, next to BAM, in a show presented by Blank Forms. They opened with a superb arrangement of John Coltrane’s “Resolution” from A Love Supreme, and immediately pulled the audience into their particular orbit. Harding spun low-end counterpoints to Wilkes’s muted, far-reaching lead lines. Guest violinist James Sanders added astringent, long bowed lines, perfect embellishments to the memorable descending melody. Before playing his tune “Ornette,” El’Zabar recounted how the namesake saxophonist and composer had changed his view of music, emphasizing freedom from all constraints, and how this “opened the door” for him and so many musicians; he also noted how Coleman was often mocked for his approach. The homage evoked the unexpected leaps and lurches of a typical Coleman melody. El’Zabar continues to draw inspiration from Coleman in his approach, and participated in a recorded tribute to his bandmate Don Cherry last year.

The band then turned to its current release, Open Me: A Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit (Spiritmuse), jumping first to a beloved tune made famous by Les McCann and Eddie Harris, “Compared to What.” It was the favorite song of his father, Clifton Blackburn, Sr., and a formative one for him; they would riff on it, improvising vocal and rhythmic lines. This version had that deeply lived-in feeling, a casual, ironic commentary on a distorted social situation. El’Zabar’s pounding right foot drove the song forward like a perpetual motion machine, something that might never stop, a common heartbeat ticking onward in the face of indignity. They did a version of McCoy Tyner’s “Passion Dance” that was also all surge and forward drive, and closed by redeeming a gospel classic that was turned into an overplayed pop hit, “The Whole World.” El’Zabar took an egalitarian step, alternating verses between “He” and “She” for who’s got the whole world in their hands, and that key but subtle change made a big difference; the metaphor moved from deity to parent or teacher, more truly universalizing it.

In recent years, the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble has had something of a resurgence, releasing numerous recordings on London’s Spiritmuse Records and touring regularly. They also offer workshops, pushing players to deepen their engagement with music. And fifty years on, their audience continues to grow. One reason their take on spiritual jazz hits home so hard is that it incorporates a wide range of influences, including aspects of R&B, soul, and gospel, and does so with an appealing ease, an organic flow.

As impressive as their recordings are, it is in performance that the music takes on another dimension. Their group sound has a different impact amid the drama of a communal experience. Theirs is something of a high-wire act, you watch them wondering how they can possibly pull it off. I can still see El’Zabar’s long fingers gliding across the hand drum, conjuring cascades of sound. It had the look and sound of magic.