Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
£11GBP
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Celebrating 50 years of Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble’s legacy and unwavering contribution to Great Black Music. ‘Open Me, A Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit’ is a new Ethnic Heritage Ensemble sound, constantly shifting gears and tempos in a jazz-blues continuum, in perpetual spontaneity, combining their meaningful music history with an innovative approach to arrangements, performance and improvisation. This is Ancient / Future Music for the Now and Beyond.
This is a special edition deluxe DBL LP 180g vinyl on gatefold jacket with obi.
It is graced by Nep Sidhu’s tapestry ‘The Sound Sculpture Forms & Knowledge of Kahil El’Zabar’, a massive incredible piece of art - recently exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, that has been inspired by and dedicated to Kahil El Zabar.
"The pursuit to collaborate and collect people’s experiences of merging into oneness through song, script or form has been a pluriversal pursuit in human potential since the early 1700s during the collection of said experiences for the Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji. These sets of exchanges personally carry on today by way of one's own participation as well as witness. InThe Sound Sculpture Forms & Knowledge Transfers of Kahil El’Zabar, the tapestry acts as a visual capture of both. By looking into Kahil El Zabar’s innovative musical vocabulary and approach to percussion, there is an eruption of interdependence through ancestry and ritual that shouts ‘The Time is Now!’ (Something he usually ends his phone conversations with when we speak). The percussion not only looks at Kahil’s own playing but further into the continuum of his teachers and peers who shared in a common conduction such as Kelan Phil Cohran, Muhal Richard Abrams, Malachi Favors and multiple other contributors to Great Black Music. The mapping of sounds is merged with the multitudes of listening through a Sikh understanding of melody to become one with it. In this sense, we see the iconography of swords, shastars and other weapons levitating in a dance of protection and exaltation. Here we see the true resonance of objects and materials take towards their own flight into a higher sound experience, beyond form, beyond shape. Spirit Music."
- Nep Sidhu
Includes unlimited streaming of Open Me, A Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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Purchasable with gift card
£39GBP
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Celebrating 50 years of Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble’s legacy and unwavering contribution to Great Black Music. ‘Open Me, A Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit’ is a new Ethnic Heritage Ensemble sound, constantly shifting gears and tempos in a jazz-blues continuum, in perpetual spontaneity, combining their meaningful music history with an innovative approach to arrangements, performance and improvisation. This is Ancient / Future Music for the Now and Beyond.
Includes unlimited streaming of Open Me, A Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Celebrating 50 Years of The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble’s Legacy
and Unwavering Contribution to Great Black Music
This is the new offering from Kahil El’Zabar and his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, in conjunction with the legendary group’s 50th anniversary, Open Me, A Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit.
Open Me is a joyous honoring of portent new directions of the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble; it’s a visionary journey into deep roots and future routes, channeling traditions old and new. It mixes El’Zabar’s original compositions with timeless classics by Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner, and Eugene McDaniels. Thus, the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble continues affirming their indelible, half-century presence within the continuum of Great Black Music.
Open Me, El’Zabar’s sixth collaboration with Spiritmuse in five years, marks another entry in a run of critically acclaimed recordings that stretch back to the first EHE recording in 1981. The storied multi-percussionist, composer, fashion designer, and former Chair of the Association of Creative Musicians (AACM) is in what might be the most productive form of his career, and now in his seventies, shows no signs of slowing down. Few creative music units can boast such longevity, and fewer still are touring as energetically and recording with the verve of the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble.
The EHE was founded by El’Zabar in 1974 originally as a quintet, but was soon paired down to its classic form — a trio, featuring El’Zabar on multi-percussion and voice, plus two horns. It was an unusual format, even by the standards of the outward-bound musicians of the AACM: “Some people literally laughed at our unorthodox instrumentation and approach. We were considered even stranger than most AACM bands at the time. I knew in my heart though that that this band had legs, and that my concept was based on logic as it pertains to the history of Great Black Music, i.e. a strong rhythmic foundation, innovative harmonics and counterpoint, well-balanced interplay and cacophony amongst the players, strong individual soloist, highly developed and studied ensemble dynamics, an in-depth grasp of music history, originality, fearlessness, and deep spirituality.”
With El’Zabar at the helm, the band’s line-up has always been open to changes, and over the years the EHE has welcomed dozens of revered musicians including Light Henry Huff, Kalaparusha Maurice Macintyre, Joseph Bowie, Hamiett Bluiett, and Craig Harris. The current line-up has been consolidated over two decades — trumpeter Corey Wilkes entered the circle twenty years ago, while baritone sax player Alex Harding joined seven years ago, after having played with El’Zabar since the early 2000s in groups such as Joseph Bowie’s Defunkt.
For Open Me, El’Zabar has chosen to push the sound of the EHE in a new direction by adding string instruments — cello, played by Ishmael Ali, and violin/viola played by James Sanders. The addition of strings opens new textural resonances and timbral dimensions in the Ensemble’s sound, linking the work to the tradition of improvising violin and cello from Ray Nance to Billy Bang, Leroy Jenkins, and Abdul Wadud.
Open Me contains a mixture of originals, including some El’Zabar evergreens such as “Barundi,” “Hang Tuff,” “Ornette,” and “Great Black Music” (often attributed to the Art Ensemble of Chicago but is, in fact, an El’Zabar composition). There are also numbers drawn from the modern tradition, which El’Zabar uniquely arranges, including a contemplative interpretation of Miles Davis’ “All Blues.” As a milestone anniversary celebration and a statement of future intent, Open Me effortlessly carries El’Zabar’s healing vision of Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit.
Featuring:
James Sanders - violin, viola
Ishmael Ali - cello
All compositions by Kahil El’Zabar
except tracks ‘All Blues’ by Miles Davis, ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’ spiritual folk by Unknown, ‘Passion Dance’ by McCoy Tyner and ‘Compared to What’ by Gene McDaniels
All arrangements by Kahil El’Zabar
Recorded in Soundmine Studios, Chicago in July 2023
Recorded and Mixed by Dennis Tousana
Mastered and Cut by Frank Merritt at The Carvery, London
Photography by Christopher Andrew, Stoptime Live
Celebrating an extraordinary 50 yrs of their unwavering contribution to Great Black Music, the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, led
by legendary Chicago multi-percussionist & composer Kahil El’Zabar (one of the leaders of spiritual jazz today), w/ Corey Wilkes on trumpet & Alex Harding on baritone sax, combine the history of EHE's music with an innovative approach that speaks to the now and beyond....more
supported by 86 fans who also own “Open Me, A Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit”
Magic in its purest form. I love Floating Points, I love Pharoah Sanders, I love The London Symphony Orchestra. It's a match made in heaven, and the result is absolutely gorgeous. I have loved this record since its release, and realized I don't own it for some reason. So its time to change that. 9.5/10 honestly could become a 10/10 on an indepth vinyl relisten. angrypizza98
