Secrets of Great Communications and Great Combustions: The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble at An die Musik

(This essay appears in the April 2016 edition of the Baltimore Jazz Alliance Newsletter)

“I would rediscover the secrets of great communications and great combustions. I would say storm. I would say river. I would say tornado. I would say leaf. I would say tree. I would be drenched by all rains, moistened by all dews.”

-- Aimé Césaire, tr. Clayton Eshelman and Annette Smith

Four notes. The concert began in a ritualized fashion, with bandleader Kahil El’Zabar seated centerstage behind a trap kit and coaxing two different tones from the tom toms with a pair of soft headed mallets: bim-bim bom bom. The tones issued forth as breaths and announced that the ceremony could begin. Indeed, the performance by the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble on February 26 at An die Musik in Baltimore was an experience more akin to a ritual or ceremony than it was a typical concert or show. The unlikely trio of drums/percussion, trombone and baritone saxophone played three extended pieces which could be said to correspond to stages of invocation/visitation/deliverance.

The above quote by Martiniquean poet Aimé Césaire from his Notebook of a Return to the Native Land expresses well the different elements of the performance – the audience experienced the soothing of dewdrops and the jarring rumbles of a mighty storm.  Onto El’Zabar’s  understated drum pattern opening the concert came sounds from Craig Harris’ trombone. Only, in keeping with the feeling of invocation, Harris did not play voiced tones, but rather let us hear his breath entering into the instrument and touching off infinite microtones. This gesture caused the audience to listen and to concentrate with the group. Baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett entered in a similarly contemplative and evocative manner and the trio went on to build the piece, using the full range and capacity of their instruments, testing the limits of them using strategically employed extended techniques. This piece evolved into something fast and fluid,  with each of the players listening intently and then building upon the others’ phrases.

With the invocation of the ceremony realized, the trio could now alter its arrangement slightly to proceed with the next act of the ceremony. Bandleader El’Zabar came out from behind the trap kit and picked up a large kalimba which hung on a collar around his neck. He commenced to play a solo on the instrument, vocalizing and adding percussion with a shaker that was wrapped around his ankle. These were violet tinged phrases. Evoking the distant outposts of the journey, Harris even brought forth the call of an elephant out of his trombone. Bluiett masterfully punctuated this scene with low blues lines on the baritone. This was a piece that rose skyward and did, indeed, conjure added presence into the room.

For the final piece, El'Zabar played a rolling beat while sitting atop the cajón and vocalizing deeply and powerfully. The other members of the trio came in and before long were playing the head to “Cherokee” by Ray Noble, the song which Charlie Parker famously transformed into the opening statement of the bebop era. The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble did not play a bebop rendition of the tune. Their version actually harkened back to the Count Basie Orchestra version of the song that predated Parker’s; it was a wide open and scenic take on the piece. Hearing Harris’ trombone harmonize in a joyful way with Bluiett’s baritone offered deliverance, “a drenching by all rains.”

In between pieces, El’Zabar remarked that 2016 marks the 44^th year of the group. He said that upon graduating from college, he told his dad that he wanted to front a trio of percussion with two horns. His father thought the idea was crazy. All these years later the arrangement El’Zabar has been leading continues to prove itself to be the perfect vehicle for engaging music for the purposes of exploration and deep communication.