This recording is the musical soundtrack of a Freedom Seder that we performed via livestream on February 21, 2021. Totally live--no edits, no overdubs!!!
Jazz Souls on Fire pays tribute to some of the Afro-Semitic Experience's favorite composers, ones whose own creativity inspired that of the members of the group. On this recording we visit pieces by Leon Thomas, Duke Ellington, Hank Mobley, John Coltrane, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and others. We honor their music, forged out of the struggles from which they emerged, lighting a way for us. It brings us back to the groove and passion of blowing, dancing, and soaring freely in sound and spirit—it brings us back to our musical roots.
What you hear on Jazz Souls on Fire is our interpretation of music that touched us as we were coming of musical age. And now, as torch bearers we lean forward and shed light, our light, on those fires that lit something in us. Plus we have a bonus track of an unreleased take on Salaam by the great South African pianist and composer, Abdullah Ibrahim.
High Holy Revival: The Afro-Semitic Experience Gets Age-Old Prayers Dancing in the Aisles on Further Definitions of the Days of Awe
For The Afro-Semitic Experience, there is dancing before the temple of sound. The kings and queens of the Cotton Club trade eights with the rock stars of cantorial music s golden age. Booker T and the MGs and Astor Piazolla inspire new visions of High Holy Day chants.
Joined by the last of the old-school cantors, Jack Mendelson, the group lays down Further Definitions of the Days of Awe, live explorations of cantorial music, jazz, Latin vibes, Afrobeat and soul. Innovative technique and rock-solid roots get feet tapping and spirits soaring. Just in time for the High Holy Days, the (Jewish) New Year and Yom Kippur, the album presents a positive, cross-cultural reimagination of repentance and catharsis.
Creating new settings for the midnight prayers of Selichot, the service that marks the beginning of the most holy time of the Jewish liturgical year, The Afro-Semitic Experience returns worship to its creative, vigorous roots. It celebrates the intersection of gospel spirit and the passion of hazzanut (an ancient Jewish style of cantorial singing). It finds powerful new points of contact with the divine.
Prayer and study are a major tenet of all three Abrahamic faiths. That s great, but to get there, worshippers often got rid of cathartic experience, reflects 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.
The Afro-Semitic Experience has already received universal critical praise for its wide ranging explorations and interpretations of the diasporic music that comes out of the Jewish-American and African-American traditions. On this, their debut album, they perform a program of twelve pieces that encompass a wide range of sounds and styles--original compositions along with their distinctive arrangements of synagogue songs, gospel songs, hymns, West African, Cuban and Puerto Rican drum beats, jazz songs and cantorial music. This is a band that is proud of its religious and political message. Plea for Peace is a politically charged and spiritually centered cry for peace, world wide spiritual unity and communication. The title track, Plea for Peace, was composed by band co-founder Warren Byrd and is an expression of his sincere desire for the world to find a way to work things out. In fact, the composition is more of a prayer than a plea. Other pieces on the album include an arrangement by Will Bartlett of Almighty God, a composition from Duke Ellington’s Second Sacred Concert, and a group arrangement--Descarga Ocho Kandelikas, an Afro-Cuban jam on the classic Hannukah song. The group merges West African drumming and gospel on their interpretation of Dottie People’s On Time God and they add just a touch of Puerto Rican Bomba to David Chevan’s arrangement of A Song for When the Temple is Rebuilt–an updated version of Yisroel Schorr’s cantorial composition, Sheh Yiboneh Beis Hamikdash.
According to Cantor Erik Contzius: "David Chevan and the Afro-Semetic Experience is doing what few artists can do well: fuse Jewish sacred music with a popular idiom. Very often, I feel that other people's attempts at doing this fall short of both the Jewish and the popular, but you can hear from this recording that Chevan and his group are deeply spiritual, and they preserve the spirit of Yossele Rosenblatt on this recording in a new and refreshing way. His virtuoso bass along with Warren Byrd on the keys (SUCH a natural, this man!), Stacy Phillips on Dobro (what SOUL!), and the rest of the ensemble make you long for the original recordings of Rosenblatt. I never thought that Jazz was an appropriate genre to be introduced into Jewish spirituality... Chevan has changed my mind forever! "
Our second CD. Recorded and released in 2000. Featuring the duo of David and Warren. Moving music from our early years.
