The Afro-Semitic Experience

The Afro-Semitic Experience closed out the musical offerings of the Rady JCC’s Tarbut festival on a high-note Nov 19, 2011, with a one of a kind musical fusion of Jewish and African American traditions.

David Chevan stood on the Berney Theatre stage and sang Avadim Hayinu unaccompanied, smiling in encouragement as audience members joined in the simple Passover song. He paused to explain the importance of the words – we were slaves, now we are the children of the free.
Chevan got the whole audience singing again. He picked up his upright bass, played an intricate slow solo variation on the melody, then signalled for the whole band to take the song through an energetic jazz rendition.

And that is the basis of the Afro-Semitic Experience – simple melodies from Jewish traditions and African and African American traditions, transformed through rich jazz arrangements and improvisation.

The musicians make a statement just by being on stage together -- African Americans in gorgeous African-style clothes and hats, and European Americans in Western clothes, clearly listening to one another and enjoying each others' music.

From the detailed Afro-Semitic Experience website:
“Through our concerts, recordings and workshops, we are actively creating an artistic response to anti-Semitism and Racism of all forms. This is our ongoing mission and it is of central importance to us.”

As the group explored the songs, they played in a variety of musical genres. Ring shouts, introduced as an early African American form of danced musical prayer, were interpreted with gospel chords. A tribute to New Orleans had a Dixieland clarinet solo, and I think I heard a Caribbean sound in the percussion and a Cajun style violin solo in the piece as well. The players said they were excited to quote cantorial singing on their instruments. A Hasidic kaddish was played as a klezmer piece – the klezmer style came through most clearly in the distinctive beat on the drums.

Percussion was a terrific feature throughout concert, with Abu Alvin Carter Sr. on congas and his son, Babafemi Alvin Carter Jr. on drum kit. They played exciting solos and shared wonderful call and response playing with the other soloists.

The founders of the Afro-Semitic Experience are Jewish composer David Chevan on bass and African American Warren Byrd on piano. They came together to perform at an interfaith concert memorial service in 1998. At the Rady JCC , they performed one piece together from the years they worked as a duet. Will Bartlett played clarinet, saxophone and flute, and Stacey Phillips played violin and Dobro. Each of them played intriguing, delicate solos, with Byrd sometimes reaching into the piano for a harp-like sound, and the band worked up wonderful grooves together.

All the band members sang, and played beautiful solos. And each of them introduced pieces, drawing on history and sharing spiritual teachings. Every piece of music, and every recording the group has made, is connected for the musicians to a spiritual theme. They spoke of peace, healing, repentance, prayer, freedom and celebration.


This concert was certainly planned with a JCC audience in mind. Every Jewish tune was familiar to me and I'm sure to many. Often the introduction and my own associations stayed with me all through the piece. At other times, the melody was stated, and then I heard only enjoyable jazz, without much connection for me to the source. The band was at its strongest when text and intention joined with music. Even an original setting of Adon Olam by David Chevan suggested some of my own feelings about the prayer.

The music was beautiful, the band's stage presence was playful. Most important for me was the celebration of two traditions in which spirituality is not distinct from entertainment. Deep emotions of awe, request and praise, beauty and artistry and fun, Jewish music and African American music, traditional and original ideas, all dance and sing together.

Editor's note: I too was at the concert and worte up a piece before Jane sent me her delightful article: So, I thought I would add a few things that I had jotted downl
The Afro-Semetic Experience defies categorization, explore the rich intersections of two distinct cultures, while penetrating the soul, and lifting spirits.

There was noticeable chemistry between the co-founders of the group, Byrd, and Chevan who initially began performing as a duo. As Chevan, who spoke of his sense of oneness with Byrd, who is th eyoungest in a family of 16 said, “He’s my brother from another mother.”


I really liked the group's catchy song, which is the title to their new CD,” “I’m on the Road to Heal My Splintered Soul.” The song, and others, at times felt like religious chants, and one can come away from the concert knowing the tune by heart. I also beautiful instrumental from a living Sephardic Jewish composer.


The group’s interpretations of Jewish liturgical and - Winnipeg Jewish Review

Please click on the link to read the story and hear the song!

"Adoshem, Adoshem, Part I" is not your zayde's prayer.

A reinvention of this traditional High Holy Day appeal is featured on Further Definitions of the Days of Awe, on which the multicultural musicians of the Afro-Semitic Experience merge Jewish, African and African-American genres.

The words of the prayer say exactly what you'd expect a High Holy Day prayer to express. They address the "gracious and compassionate" deity who forgives sins and grants pardon. "Adoshem" is a term used by pious Jews in place of the unspeakable name of God, combining "Adonai" (Hebrew for "my Lord") and "shem" (name).

The start of the song sounds like a rehearsal — there are voices, piano riffs and drum beats, but you can't tell where the song is headed. Then, the musicians gather their strength and begin. At first, the song clings to its Jewish roots, courtesy of the warm-hearted, yearning cantorial voice of Jack Mendelsohn. Yet there's a different feel to this "Adoshem." The pianist's fingers roam restlessly over the keyboard with arpeggios, strike jazz- and blues-inflected chords, and play the stuttering notes of a gospel hymn — a reminder, perhaps, that sinners are stuck in their ways and need to find ways to stop sputtering and push forward.

Then, the song does indeed push forward in ways that synagogue-goers have never heard. Percussionist Baba David Coleman, a Yoruba priest from Cuba, suggested the rhythm of a tango for "Adoshem." With that seductive beat, underlined by an insistent drummer and the melancholy thrum of a cello, the Afro-Semitic Experience creates a Latin expression of the Jewish habit of swaying, or shuckling, to connect the physical self to a higher power. Is this going too far? "Music, especially sacred music, is not static," bass player David Chevan says. "We don't do this in an ironic manner, but rather out of respect and joy." - NPR (National Public Radio)

Please click on the link to read the story and hear the song!

"Adoshem, Adoshem, Part I" is not your zayde's prayer.

A reinvention of this traditional High Holy Day appeal is featured on Further Definitions of the Days of Awe, on which the multicultural musicians of the Afro-Semitic Experience merge Jewish, African and African-American genres.

The words of the prayer say exactly what you'd expect a High Holy Day prayer to express. They address the "gracious and compassionate" deity who forgives sins and grants pardon. "Adoshem" is a term used by pious Jews in place of the unspeakable name of God, combining "Adonai" (Hebrew for "my Lord") and "shem" (name).

The start of the song sounds like a rehearsal — there are voices, piano riffs and drum beats, but you can't tell where the song is headed. Then, the musicians gather their strength and begin. At first, the song clings to its Jewish roots, courtesy of the warm-hearted, yearning cantorial voice of Jack Mendelsohn. Yet there's a different feel to this "Adoshem." The pianist's fingers roam restlessly over the keyboard with arpeggios, strike jazz- and blues-inflected chords, and play the stuttering notes of a gospel hymn — a reminder, perhaps, that sinners are stuck in their ways and need to find ways to stop sputtering and push forward.

Then, the song does indeed push forward in ways that synagogue-goers have never heard. Percussionist Baba David Coleman, a Yoruba priest from Cuba, suggested the rhythm of a tango for "Adoshem." With that seductive beat, underlined by an insistent drummer and the melancholy thrum of a cello, the Afro-Semitic Experience creates a Latin expression of the Jewish habit of swaying, or shuckling, to connect the physical self to a higher power. Is this going too far? "Music, especially sacred music, is not static," bass player David Chevan says. "We don't do this in an ironic manner, but rather out of respect and joy." - NPR (National Public Radio)

Please click on the link to hear the interview with David and Alvin!!

As Rosh Hashanah begins Wednesday night, The Afro-Semitic Experience brings a twist to traditional music associated with the holiday. The band's latest album, Further Definitions of the Days of Awe, fuses Jewish liturgical music with jazz and Afro-centric rhythms. Guest host Jacki Lyden talks with founder, composer and bassist David Chevan, as well as drummer Alvin Carter Junior. - NPR's Talk Show Tell Me More

by Ari Davidow

This one CD summation of three monster concerts from a year ago, "Further Definitions of the Days of Awe" is a perfect summation of both the Afro-Semitic Experience's wonderful fusion of Jewish and Black sacred music, and the art of the Cantor as mostly represented by the irrepressible Jack Mendelson, but also including several other significant names. And what better time for High Holiday nusakh than the High Holidays?

David Chevan has been exploring Jewish and Afro-American spiritual music through the lens of jazz, for years. As I love mentioning, my first date with the person who is now my wife was at the CD release of one of his first efforts. The music gets better. David writes: "For most of the past decade the Afro-Semitic Experience has played the midnight Selichot service with Cantor Jack Mendelson at his synagogue in White Plains. We have, in the process, created a new way to accompany cantorial music and we decided to document it. We recorded three concerts in August, 2010 just before the High Holy Days, one in New York City, one in New Haven, Connecticut, and one in Greenfield, Massachusetts. And now that music is ready for you to hear. The new CD is called Further Definitions of the Days of Awe and it features the band with special guests Cantor Jack Mendelson, Cantor Lisa Arbisser, Cantor Erik Contzius, cantorial soloist Danny Mendelson, and trumpeter Frank London.
That's the bones. But it also misses the extent to which, in a country which has stopped celebrating hazonus, Jack Mendelson—frequently with David Chevan and the Afro-Semitic Orchestra, has reminded us all how it is and how much we have given up since the "golden age" of cantors so many years ago. I also have to say, from the spare opening chords of the Ashrei, how much I appreciate the way that the Afro-Semitic Experience eschews the drippy strings and orchestrations of that bygone Golden Age to give us something more spare and more fitting to go along with the cantor's voice.
There are moments when the mix of black and Jewish spiritual music that are the focus of the Afro-Semitic Ensemble fuse with Mendelson's prayer perfectly. The opening fanfare of the "Viddui," for instance, is just perfect, and yet would never have happened in another context. The Latin-tinged opening of "Adoshem, Adoshem, Part 2" (and the call-response of the arrangement) is another example. And then, we are reminded why we especially go to shul on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with Cantor Mendelson's supplication on the opening of "Mitzratzeh B'Rachamaim."
There are also moments when, despite (or enhanced by) new arrangements, the brilliance of those hazanim from the Golden Age shines through. One gem is a marvellously fun rendition of Yosele Rosenblatt's "Hassidic Kaddish." Another is Alter Yechiel Kamiol's "Tivienu," introduced reverently with explanation, and then introduced again by jazzy clarinet, all stepping back as Cantor Mendelson pleads the words. In the same vein I call attention to Cantor Erik Contzius' "Sh'ma Koleinu."
In their High Holiday series, David Chevan and the Afro-Semitic Experience have truly fused an American spiritual original, and in the process have also reminded us of the glory of hazanos. For this CD's listeners, there is the added benefit of hearing a wonderful CD, released just in time for the yamim noraim, the Jewish High Holidays. For 5772, there is something new under the sun, and a reminder that Jewish religious music, like its secular klezmer cousin, is wonderful to hear on all occasions.
- The Klezmershack

by Chris Arnott

When I noticed this new album was called Further Definitions of the Days of Awe, I had to go listen again to The Days of Awe: Meditations for Selichot, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippu. That 2003 CD was billed as a solo project of Afro-Semitic Experience co-founder David Chevan’s 2003 but features the Afro-Semitic ensemble as well as Frank London. The yesterDays of Awe made me backtrack further to Afro-Semitic’s 2005 Plea for Peace and finally all the way home to Chevan and Warren Byrd’s This Is the Afro-Semitic Experience, the first album to use that name.

I could have dug out Chevan’s old Bassology recordings, where the roots for his musical cross-pollinations began. But I’d already done that last month, going on a Bassology binge without suspecting that a new Chevan disk was coming in the mail.

Not that everyone would (or should) do such dutiful scholarship.

But what’s most notable and remarkable about the Afro-Semitic Experience is how it gets you craving more. The band works with ritualized formats which suggest regular worship. I’m not Jewish, and don’t observe the Days of Awe which presage Yom Kippur. But I do observe the Afro-Semitic Experience.
Further Definitions of the Days of Awe is a live album, but the only difference between it and the studio records is that you can hear an audience cheering and applauding. Afro-Semitic albums always sound live. When cantors are enlisted as vocalists, they sound genuine and openly emotional, not studied or pristine. The band improvises readily and can really create a wall of sound if they wish, but also know when to politely sit aside and let Warren Byrd do a sweet, subdued, piano solo.

Afro-Semitic Experience has existed under that name for a decade now, and boasts the same five core members: Chevan on bass, Byrd on piano, Will Bartlett on various clarinets and saxophones and percussionists Alvin Carter Jr. (behind a drum kit) and Baba David Coleman (on congo drums).

Trumpeter Frank London’s back for the New Haven one of the three concerts from which this recording was culled. (The others were in New York City and Greenfield, Mass., and all took place just before Rosh Hashanah last year.) One notable absence on this album is guitarist/violinist Stacy Philips, but you can’t have everything.

Actually, Afro-Semitic Experience suggests that maybe you can have everything. They enlighten, uplift and entertain. They respect traditions even while placing them in odd juxtapositions, and they improvise wildly. They bring in guest players from rabbinical chanters to electronicists, yet retain their key characteristics.

The effort it must take for the musicians to maintain such balance, grace and reverence while following their experimental instincts seems extraordinary. Miraculous, you could say. An interfaith blend of African rhythms, be-bop jazz and any Jewish music which can be applied, from klezmer to classical and, of course, cantorial. On the two-part “Ashrei,” beats get sprightly behind fervent wails. Then the horns kick in. “Viddui” opens with a sultry soul melody, almost a midnight groove. But instead of Marvin Gaye’s back-up singers, there’s a bunch of guys chanting in loose harmony, in Hebrew.
Describing the Afro-Semitic Experience always sounds funny to some people, like it’s some sort of forced conceptual joke. Which is why you must, to borrow a word from the band’s name, experience it. This CD, which shares one of the band’s own favorite rituals—backing Cantor Jack Mendelson at the midnight Selichot service at a synagogue in White Plains, New York—is an awesome place to start. - scribblers.us

By Carol Cooper Oct. 5 2011

The Afro-Semitic Experience seems determined to do to the synagogue what Jolson and Gershwin once did to Broadway. Bassist David Chevan and keyboardist Warren Byrd have been collaborating with traditional cantor Jack Mendelson and his White Plains congregation for years, and Further Definitions of the Days of Awe (Reckless DC Music) documents three concerts from 2010 that demonstrate their combined approach to the Jewish High Holy Days. The cantor's ability to improvise around a mode or a feeling allows the band to segue from Latin to gospel to klezmer rhythms. But despite earnest attempts to lay funky backbeats behind the first two cuts, this album doesn't really catch fire until the downtempo "Mitzratzeh B'rachamim"—which is incidentally also the first song featuring vocals by Jack's son, Daniel. And although Dad steals back lost thunder on bluesy Gershwin-esque numbers like "Shomer Yisrael" and "Tiviyenu," here the prayers of atonement and praise generally work better over cool jazz than hot.
- The Village Voice

By Kerry Dexter
Forgiveness, atonement, family. joy, connection and reconnection: these are themes which run through the holy days marked in the calendar of the Jewish faith this time of year, holy days which include Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, two of the most sacred during the the year.
So it’s a good time to take a listen to a new recording from the Afro- Semitic Experience called Further Definitions of the Days of Awe. On it, a cross cultural band of musicians whose backgrounds range from classical to gospel to jazz and whose religions range from Judaism to Yoruba, join up with top notch cantors, respected song leaders in Judaism, to create new settings for the midnight prayers of Selichot, the service that marks the beginning of the most holy time of the Jewish liturgical year.
Do you have to be Jewish to appreciate what they are doing with this music? No. If you are, will this reimagining sit well with you? Quite likely.
There are elements of blues, jazz, southern gospel, and melismatic middle eastern sounds all wrapped in a music which, whether you know the service or not, comes across as spirit reaching for and connecting with the divine. “Prayer and study are a major tenet of all three Abrahamic faiths. That’s great,” says group founder, bassist, and composer David Chevan. “But we need the dancing at the temple, those ecstatic moments. That’s really where we’re coming from.”
Cantor Jack Mendelson was impressed by the group’s abilities to handle complexity and spontaneity in the context of tradition. He began meeting with Chevan, singing him lines he had learned through decades of training and study and and teaching others, among them his son Daniel. Daniel sings with his father on several track on the album, and other cantors appear as guests as well.
Members of the Afro-Semitic Experience include bassist Chevan, Baba David Coleman, an African drummer and drum builder, who is also a Yoruba priest, Will Bartlett, who plays woodwinds, who teaches jazz saxophone and klezmer workshops, Babafemi Alvin Carter, Afro-Cuban and West African percussion and Klezmer drummer, Warren Byrd, pianist, composer, and teacher of gospel arranging, and Stacy Phillips, steel guitarist and violinist. Guests including trumpet masters Frank London and also Saskia Laroo join in
The music they offer on Further Definitions of the Days of Awe. is soulful, whether that soul hearkens to the sounds of Otis Redding or an prayer for forgiveness in temple. There are jazz horn intros and rocking jazzy breaks in some of the pieces, and then other which invoke the sound of lament and longing for healing and home. Latin rhythms find their way in, as do beats of African percussion.
It sounds as though there is a lot going on here, and there is. Through it all the cantorial presence offers a clear strand connecting the heart of tradition with this new way of enhancing its sound. What track appeal to you most will vary according to your taste. Three you may want to check out especially are Shomer Israel, Viddui, and Adoshem, Part I.
- USA Today

“True to a multicultural spirit, the Afro-Semitic Experience delivers a repertory . . . where different styles like klezmer, bebop, gospel, Afro-Cuban rhythms and the sweet sounds of West Africa meet. In addition to the ample musical spectrum, the group doesn’t leave aside religious and political convictions that manifest themselves in the spiritual union that brings about the music.” - Rolling Stone Magazine

“The Afro-Semitic Experience evokes the sound of cultural shift, of a melting pot, of spirituality and devotion and ceremony, of partying and praying and jamming. . . .A danceable, trance-causing flurry of notes with godly underpinnings. Underneath all the oomph you feel the warmth, wealth fury and pain of whole nations, repressed cultures, challenged beliefs. This band is the sound of the past, the present and the great beyond all at once.” - New Haven Advocate

“When Connecticut’s Afro-Semitic Experience — think Jewish wedding, revival meeting and Charles Mingus all at once — lays down the groove, your ears pop with strange sensations. A lot of genre combining ends up being mediocrity with an identity problem. But jazz collaborators David Chevan and Warren Byrd are so good at what they do that the resulting mix is compelling and decidedly not esoteric.
Many of the songs sound like straight-ahead jazz at a cursory listen, but the details get cross-cultural fast — the melody might turn Middle Eastern while the rhythms go African. When lap steel comes sliding in with a bluesy twang, all bets are off, and the multi-ethnic party really begins. This is multi-culturalism with its hair down, and well worth a listen.
The Afro-Semitic Experience brings home the bacon and the gefilte fish.” James Heflin - Valley Advocate

“the band’s amalgam of jazz, klezmer, world beat and other vernacular music reveals an admirable conviction and palpable high spirits. Pianist Warren Byrd is a fine player, a strong, assertive improviser with a quirky sense of harmony.” Chris Kelsey - JazzTimes Magazine

“more a joyous celebration of diversity than it is any kind of solemn piece of gravity. . . "Let Us Break Bread Together" successfully accomplishes its goal of combining African-American and Jewish experiences, offering a mixture of music which can be appreciated from any cultural perspective. And there's no reason not to tap your toes while the music dances forward.” Nils Jacobson - allaboutjazz.com

“what impresses most about this music is that it’s not a mere exercise in world music mix and match. This is music of fire and passion and that’s what Jazz is all about.” Robert Iannapollo - Cadence Magazine

Imagine Charles Mingus sitting in with a Klezmer band, playing Gospel music set to the polyrhythmic pace of the congas and bongos. Such seemed the case on January 8th when the Afro-Semitic Experience transformed Bnai Keshet into a whoopin', hollerin', testifyin' celebration of multicultural soul music.

Not only does the Connecticut-based band combine a multitude of musical forms: Jazz, Gospel, Klezmer, Swing, Blues, and even Funk, it also takes most of its compositional inspiration from traditional Jewish-American and African-American sacred music. The concert included modern, stylized renditions of "Eliyahu Ha Navi" and "Let Us Break Bread Together". Indeed, the founders David Chevan (bass) and Warren Byrd (piano), who met in the mid-90's at a gig at the Foxwoods Casino Resort, created this musical project to draw on the rich spiritual heritage of the Jewish nigunim (melodies) and the black church spirituals of their respective childhoods. The two discovered that the music they grew up with and formed who they are today, could be combined
through the common language of Jazz to form a new powerful expression of the human experience - the Afro-Semitic Experience. The result is an elegant musical repertoire that reflects the universal struggles and hopes of peoples with similar histories of slavery, oppression, redemption, and plenty of humor.

The concert opened with "Sha Shtil", a funked-up version of a traditional Yiddish song arranged by Chevan and delivered with Arabic overtones (think Ellington's Far East Suite). This groove set the tone for a night of cultural fusion, improvisation in the finest tradition of Jazz performances,
and frequent playful dueling between band members - the "call-and-response" that harkens back through hip-hop, to Jazz, to traditional African musical storytelling. At times contemplative and at times rollicking, the band gave reverence to melodies from worship services stretching back generations, yet equally appealed to modern secular sensibilities. The band was also not
above the occasional banter that poked fun at different members.

Those other members of the Afro-Semitic Experience included Alvin Carter, Jr. on drums and percussion, Baba David Coleman on percussion - an Orisha priest and the "spiritual center of the band", Grammy award winning Stacy Phillips on violin, dobro (a lap steel guitar), and Will Bartlett on saxophone and clarinet.

If you peeked into the sanctuary you could see that the seventh member of the band was actually the BK audience itself, which collectively sighed and gasped, foot-stomped and cheered as it was taken on a ride through the musically familiar and unfamiliar.

The band's very existence is not only a statement against Racism and Anti-Semitism, but also confronts head on the tension and distrust that sometimes occurs between Blacks and Jews. Decades after the Civil Rights Movement saw an alliance between the two communities to fight issues of injustice on a national scale (we immediately think of Chaney, Goodman, and
Schwerner, whose murderers may finally face trial this year), the Afro-Semitic Experience continues that alliance based on mutual respect and love.

There is still much work to be done on the non-musical front, but it's comforting to know that even in an age marked by violent crises at home and around the world, when ancient cultures clash over what seems irreconcilable differences, that there exist collaborators like Chevan and Byrd who in their way bring together the best of their separate traditions, find commonality, and put forth a vision of hope and transcendence. We all need to continue on that ride as the seventh member.

As Dizzy Gillespie would say "into the realm of the metaphysical".

- The Rainbow Reporter

“the band’s amalgam of jazz, klezmer, world beat and other vernacular music reveals an admirable conviction and palpable high spirits. Pianist Warren Byrd is a fine player, a strong, assertive improviser with a quirky sense of harmony.” Chris Kelsey - JazzTimes Magazine

“I have got to say as I sit here with the Plea for Peace album blasting as I cook dinner and my memories of Saturday night's concert at St. Philips Church in Old Salem that I have not been to so rocking, so moving, so joyful, so educational, so entertaining and so thoroughly enjoyable a concert in a long time, and never quite like your group's. It was such a pleasure to share it all in a mixed audience in an intimate space with honest intellectual, physical, and emotional response.” - e-mail to the band

By NAT HENTOFF
Years ago, the bassist-composer Charles Mingus and I were talking about the first time music penetrated so deeply into us that we knew we could never be without it. "As a child," Mingus told me, "my stepmother would take me to a Holiness Church. The blues were in the Holiness churches -- moaning and riffs between the audience and the preacher. People went into trances."
I told him about sitting next to my father in an Orthodox synagogue when I was a child as the hazzan, or cantor, in his black robes and high black skullcap took over the service. As I wrote in my memoir, "Boston Boy" (Knopf/Paul Dry Books paperback): "What he sings is partly written, largely improvised. He is a master of melisma -- for each sacred syllable, there are three, four, six notes that climb and dramatically entwine with the cry, the krechts (a catch in the voice)" that I was later to hear in black blues singers. There were moments when I wanted to rise and shout, but I did not want to embarrass my father.
There is now a recording, "Yizkor: Music of Memory" by David Chevan and the Afro-Semitic Experience (www.chevan.addr.com) -- original, resonantly melodic jazz settings of Jewish prayers and psalms -- that Mingus and I, if he were still here, could rise and share. The hazzan here, often improvising with the soul-stretching intensity of John Coltrane, is the internationally renowned Alberto Mizrahi, described by the BBC as "riding the notes [like] the Jewish Pavarotti."
Now in its 11th year, the Afro-Semitic Experience was formed by composer and bassist David Chevan, a practicing scholar of jazz and Jewish music. The group has performed around this country, largely at colleges, synagogues and churches, and in Europe.
Its players, transcending categories, are Mr. Chevan (a bassist who holds a doctorate in musicology); Baba David Coleman (an African drummer and drum builder, and a Yoruban priest); Will Bartlett (woodwinds, conductor of jazz saxophone and klezmer workshops); Babafemi Alvin Carter (Afro-Cuban and West African percussion and Klezmer drummer); Warren Byrd (pianist, composer and teacher of gospel arranging); and Stacy Phillips (steel guitarist, violinist and author of the first book to accurately transcribe early klezmer music).
With Hazzan Mizrahi, they bring us into the twilight world of "Yizkor," the Jewish equivalent of a requiem Mass -- psalms and prayers, says Mr. Chevan, "that have been recited since the time of the Crusades." The Yizkor service is observed at Yom Kippur (the holiest day of the Jewish year) and at three other times.
The accompanying booklet contains the original texts and translations, beginning with "Adonai, Mah Adam" ("My God, what is man that you recognize him?" -- which brought to mind Duke Ellington's teleological question, "What Am I Here For?")
The deeply searching melodies and the heart-beating rhythms made me remember the title of Elie Wiesel's book on Hasidic Masters, "Souls on Fire" (Random House). I've been in Hasidic synagogues where prayers are continually lifted by music, but never before have I heard this lyrically powerful a fusion of Jewish and jazz souls on fire.
And, as Mr. Chevan recalls, "The band has had so much experience working with cantors that we had little trouble figuring out our parts behind Hazzan Mizrahi" and then became part of his improvisations.
Hazzan Mizrahi's style, not often heard today, except in traditional synagogues, is Hazzanut, which startled me with its "cry" of the life force -- and its vulnerability -- when I was a child. Mr. Chevan calls it "a mixture of out-of-time recitative, some improvisation, and distinctive tunes." By "out-of-time," he means that "when the cantor moves from singing a tune to focus on individual words, those amazing improvised . . . highly ornamental melismas emerge. In some ways this is similar to what a gospel singer does; it is just that gospel more often stays in time."
And what I heard, back in my boyhood traditional shul (synagogue), is what Mr. Chevan calls an "earthy quality that connected to the ancient times" as the hazzan got so personally and sometimes agonizedly into the prayer that, as a kid, I sometimes thought he was arguing with God. I so wished I could understand the words.
The stunning impact of the Hazzanut way of singing is also shown by Ben Ratliff in his new book, "The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music" (Times Books). Ornette Coleman, the beyond-modern-jazz icon, told of the first time he was given a 1916 recording by Cantor Josef Rosenblatt (whose 78 rpm discs I began collecting when I was 13).
"I started crying like a baby," Coleman said. "The record was crying, singing, and praying, all in the same breath. And none of it was crossing each other. I said, 'Wait a minute. You can't find those "notes." They don't exist.'"
“The record was crying, singing, and praying, all in the same breath. And none of it was crossing each other.” Ornette Coleman
But the hazzans who could sing - Wall Street Journal

“I have got to say as I sit here with the Plea for Peace album blasting as I cook dinner and my memories of Saturday night's concert at St. Philips Church in Old Salem that I have not been to so rocking, so moving, so joyful, so educational, so entertaining and so thoroughly enjoyable a concert in a long time, and never quite like your group's. It was such a pleasure to share it all in a mixed audience in an intimate space with honest intellectual, physical, and emotional response.” - e-mail to the band