Time keeps on slipping
Mike Chamberlain
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Ethnic Heritage Ensemble: Respecting traditions
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The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble finds a wonderful way of reconciling past and present
To some, the motto of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians [AACM] - "Great black music, ancient to future" - might seem a cliché, but to see the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble in action is a lesson in how resonant, resilient and adaptable the African-American musical tradition is. Kahil El'Zabar, drummer, composer, teacher and leader of the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, is a very thoughtful man with a strong sense of responsibility to his community and cultural tradition.
"I went to college at the University of Ghana in Legon in 1970 and '71," he says of the inspiration behind the formation of the ensemble in 1973. "I had been in the AACM since 1968 and then I was out travelling with people like Gene Ammons and Eddie Harris and Dizzy Gillespie. After being on the road for a couple of years I knew I needed a further education. So, at Lake Forest, I did an exchange program with Ghana... When I came back and graduated from Lake Forest in 1973, I put together the first band. The idea was to try to combine the music of America and West Africa and find a way that I could create systems that would allow me to be respectful to all those traditions."
Indeed, the music of the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, with both discipline and abandon, skilfully incorporates West African musical traditions - heard in the frame drum and thumb piano played by El'Zabar - and the jazz, blues, soul and R&B of his hometown Chicago. The current incarnation of the group includes saxophonist Ernest Dawkins, trumpeter
Corey Wilkes and guitarist Fareed Haque."There are very few experiences that we are receiving today that acknowledge time as a necessary element of development," El'Zabar notes. Technological development, he says, happens so quickly that people forget about what he calls the "savouring process of expression that happens through time. I hope that we'll figure out ways as technology moves quicker and societies move faster that will respect some of the more ancient traditions that manage to take time at a pace more reflective of nature."
Ethnic Heritage Ensemble
At La Sala Rossa (4848 St-Laurent), Feb. 13
