The name Kahil El’Zabar–percussionist, bandleader, film scorer, vocalist, and teacher–has attained a certain stature in Chicago music circles in the last 15 years. But it may have been more recognizable to more people on just one night last November in the small German city of Leverkusen.
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It comes as no surprise that the Leverkusen producers asked El’Zabar–in many ways a spiritual and musical leader of this contingent–to help assemble this package. In fact, the Leverkusen producers first got the idea for this project after hearing El’Zabar’s recordings on Sound Aspects, a German label. But it does come as some surprise that they also devoted an entire evening to various aspects of El’Zabar’s own music–a retrospective featuring his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, his Orchestra Infinity, and the partial reunion of a little-known group that was vital to his entire musical philosophy, Sun Drummer.
I count El’Zabar among my close friends, so perhaps my sense of the importance of his accomplishments is clouded. As the audiences at Leverkusen did, you’ll have to judge for yourself. In doing so, you might consider his creation of a hybrid between house music–the stripped-down Chicago dance beat that gained popularity in Europe in the mid-80s –and pure jazz; this hybrid now goes under the name Acid Jazz in England, where a record label of the same name acknowledges El’Zabar as a pioneer of the form on the explanatory description that accompanies each album.
Of the three groups that will make up “Leverkusen West,” the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble is the oldest. With two horns and El’Zabar splitting his time between congas and a traditional trap set, the ensemble remains one of the most oddly instrumented units in modern music. It didn’t start out that way: the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble (“the Ethnics” in El’Zabar’s shorthand) was in fact a jazz orchestra of “usually 12 pieces” when he conceived it in 1974. He later reduced that number to five; and by the time he took the group to Europe in the early 80s it had become a quartet, featuring percussion, drums–no bass–and two tenor saxophonists, Light Henry Huff and Edward Wilkerson. When traps drummer Ben Montgomery was suddenly called back to the States, says El’Zabar, “we were left to create a sound, just the three of us. We ended up with an extended stay; we played Europe for nine months.”
