At first glance, you might not think Kahil El’Zabar, 70, is a spiritual jazz musician. Tall and handsome with tanned skin and a bushy moustache, wearing dark sunglasses and a stylish black suit on a January afternoon, he looked more like a fashion model or a retired athlete. That’s not to say avant-jazz men can’t be chic, but they rarely look this good.
“My mom owns a bridal formal wear business, so fashion has always been a part of my life since I was a little kid,” she says over cups of green tea at the Moxy Hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “I have friends who are 70 years old, and they’ll look at me and say, ‘Why are you wearing those silly clothes?’ Like, ‘We wore wingtips and khakis in ’69. It’s 2023, and just because I’m a senior citizen doesn’t mean I can’t be present.’”
For the past 50 years, El’Zabar has been following the line between fashion and music, present and future, American jazz and West African compositional structure. In 1974, he founded the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble as a quartet that blurs the edges of traditional jazz, Afrocentric rhythms and cosmic expanse. Like the Pyramids, the Ohio-based band that wore African finery and played polyrhythmic arrangements lifted from the continent, El’Zabar’s group was not well-appreciated by American audiences. The quartet arrived at a time when jazz musicians were beginning to blend their sounds with stadium-sized funk and rock, and psychedelic African jazz was considered a bridge too far.
As a result, El’Zabar is underrated in the pantheon of spiritual jazz luminaries, despite his healthy résumé. For someone who played with Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, Nina Simone and Dizzy Gillespie, his name doesn’t sound like Pharoah Sanders, John Coltrane and Sun Ra.
It’s because “he’s a percussionist,” said film director Dwayne Johnson-Cochran, who has made five documentaries on El’Zabar, in a telephone interview. “With Kahil as a drummer, it’s a bit discounted because he’s the guy keeping the beat. He has melodies that are simple but complex in counterpoint; in many ways, he is a genre within himself. People are not in tune with what he’s putting out, but it’s really awesome.
On Friday, El’Zabar will release “Open Me, a Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit,” the Ensemble’s 18th album, a long, meditative LP of remade songs from his personal discography including reimagined by Miles Davis and McCoy Tyner. Not only does it celebrate the race of Black music, it celebrates its own longevity.
El’Zabar was born Clifton Blackburn in November 1953 in Chicago. His father was a policeman and a novice drummer, and his family lived in the same Chatham neighborhood as pianist Ramsey Lewis, and saxophonists Gene Ammons and Eddie Harris. “And my neighbor is Mamie Till,” said Emmett Till’s mother. “My mother said, ‘Mamie doesn’t have her son, so you have to make her snow and you have to cut her grass without money.”
He became interested in jazz as a small boy after seeing how Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong worked, in the culture. His father bought him a drum set when he was 4, and scattered with his son to help him learn the instrument.
“I’m almost the last generation to emerge from what I call segregated elegance,” says El’Zabar. “There’s a certain way you have to dress, a certain way you have to speak. Style, personality and boldness are very important commodities in how we identify ourselves as human beings. And the jazz musician exemplifies that.”
The music, he continues, is equally aspirational. “When you think about Miles Davis and how he carried himself, and you listen to the music, it has a refinement. It has an incredible blues sensitivity that’s informed by harmonics, informed by quarter progressions and the advances from each generation. And so my generation wants to do the same thing.
El’Zabar began playing professionally at age 16, learning the ins and outs of the road with Ammons. (When he wasn’t playing drums, he was a teen basketball star who served as captain of his high school team.) He went on to play with Gillespie, saxophonist Cannonball Adderley and Simone, who quickly made him a full-fledged working artist. . with powerful credits.
He changed his stage name after his peer Fred Walker switched to his Derf Reklaw (Fred Walker spelled backwards), which intrigued the young Clifton Blackburn. “Notfilc Nrubkcalb — that won’t work,” he said with a laugh. “My mother’s family name was El’Zabar, and my uncle gave me Kahil, so I went with it.”
As a teenager in the late ’60s, El’Zabar studied at the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in Chicago, where he was tutored by multi-instrumentalist Muhal Richard Abrams and trumpeter Phil Cohran. , who learned to compose songs and leads his own band. After graduating from Lake Forest College and studying West African music and culture at the University of Ghana, he was elected chairman of the AACM at age 22, a formidable post for a young composer, and remained in the chair until 1981.
Saxophonist David Murray first met El’Zabar on a basketball court in Chicago in 1975. He saw El’Zabar play a gig in the city and was drawn to his work. “He’s a first-rate drummer and a strong leader,” Murray said in a phone interview. “It’s like he’s always communicating directly with a higher power.” Calling him a connector with a tireless work ethic, Murray also praised El’Zabar’s ability to engage people. “He can speak everybody’s language,” he added. “You can talk to a teacher at the same time.”
Or a fashion designer. El’Zabar has been sewing her own clothes since she was 11, at the behest of her mother who taught her children the art. “Honestly I hated it, but we had to do it,” he recalled. “But then leaving home and trying to make a living playing music, well, we all know what happens. So making clothes was a way for me to make money without making money playing music. “
He made a West African dress for Simone and floral sundresses for singer and actress Freda Payne. He made pants for other musicians and charged $50 a pop. Today, El’Zabar runs an invitation-only resale shop in Chicago, filled with one-of-a-kind pieces he’s acquired over the years, along with his own designs.
While the new album celebrates 50 years of his first band, it also opens up the evolution of Black music through the lens of hypnotic soul. “All Blues” reimagines the Miles Davis classic by removing the horn section and giving it a walking drum line to really sound blues. “The Whole World,” a gospel standard, is modernized with rhythmic funk-adjacent drums and looping horns by trumpeter Corey Wilkes and saxophonist Alex Harding. Where Les McCann and Eddie Harris’ “Compared to What” was a grand affair with soaring piano chords and soulful vocals, El’Zabar’s version is quiet and introspective, the sound of a man taking stock softly of modern-day America.
For someone who has accomplished so much but still hopes for more adulation — “He’s a nice guy who likes his flowers now,” Johnson-Cochran says — El’Zabar still keeps himself open to new creative possibilities. “Open Me” looks back, but still moves forward.
However, it has been 50 years of doing so. Where does the time go?
“I can’t believe it,” El’Zabar said, laughing. “It was not easy. We had to constantly prove our viability from developing our music. Many people don’t need to do that. And now when I see people saying that I’m really doing something, I’m grateful, but this is 50 years later. Being different comes at a price, but it gives you joy for the authenticity of your own expression and the ability to live by it.”
