Music that crosses cultural and ethnic boundaries is not a new concept. Most people have heard Paul Simon’s 1986 hit “Graceland,” which infused African music into American pop. But nearly 100 years ago Bela Bartok, a composer in the classical European style, incorporated his Hungarian folk heritage into his music, notes Eric Charry, an associate professor of music at Wesleyan University.
Instruments have also skipped across the globe.
“The British brought the violin to South India centuries ago but India took it and modified it slightly. Now it’s used to play classical Indian music,” says Charry, an expert in ethnomusicology – the comparative study of music.
Nationwide, dozens of artists are now combining musical sounds and styles from multiple cultures to make beautiful music that creates bridges between cultures for both audience and artist.
The Afro-Semitic Experience
About eight years ago, upright bass player David Chevan was late for a jazz gig.
When he arrived, however, it wasn’t jazz he heard playing. Pianist Warren Byrd and the drummer, both African-Americans, were playing a gospel song. Chevan jumped in.
“I thought ‘Wow, this is really fun to be playing a sacred Christian song, even though I’m Jewish,” Chevan says.
Afterward, Chevan suggested they teach each other their spiritual music. Byrd, however, was skeptical.
“It sounded like he (Chevan) was trying to posture and be political about something,” Byrd says. “I was trying to avoid being political and deal directly with pure music. But the insight of his idea is that it’s just as much pure music to explore these things.”
The duo is now a sextet, and has released a half dozen CDs while playing regularly at synagogues and churches.
On one song, the group combines the spiritual “Soon-I Will Be Done,” originally sung by slaves with “Ani Ma’amin,” which Chevan says many Jews sang as they were taken into Nazi gas chambers.
“Jazz can join different musical styles because it is so free-form and spontaneous,” Byrd says. Several years ago, the Connecticut-based group booked a show at a Toledo synagogue and invited parishioners of an African-American church to join them. The groups will reunite when the band returns later this year.
“I told them, ‘You just had your own Afro-Semitic experience,” Chevan says. “It’s the name of the band, but it’s also what happens.”
The Sunny Jain Collective
Percussionist Sunny Jain’s musical roots can be traced to several different trees. The bhajans, or traditional Hindu devotional music his mother listened to; the Top 40 he and his siblings crowded around the radio to hear; and jazz passed on from a beloved music teacher.
The Sunny Jain Collective, a quintet formed six years ago, has released two CDs and plays nightclubs in the U.S. and in India. Jain plays a traditional drum kit along with an Indian drum called a dhol. Another member plays the saxophone and incorporates electronica-style effects.
Jain believes the combination of western jazz and traditional Indian music makes a passionate musical mix.
“You take bhangra rhythms and they fit so naturally, like a glove, to swing music because they both have that loping feel. That intensity, that buoyancy,” he says. “Because they both share that improvisational aspect where a person is allowed to be completely honest and bare themselves to an audience. That lends itself to intense, sincere emotion. Both styles have that intensity, so there’s a link right there.”
Qantara
In Arabic, Qantara means “arch”. Simon Shaheen thought the term would be the perfect name for a musical group that combines western Jazz, traditional Arabic and Latin American music.
“When you have an arch, you enter through it and you don’t always know what to expect inside,” says Shaheen, who composes and plays violin and oud, an Arabic stringed instrument. “The qantara also holds up the structure because of its shape – the name has many symbolic meanings. This is why we like it.”
The group has released two CDs, including Blue Flame, which was nominated for 11 Grammy Awards in 2001. Qantara’s percussionist plays both traditional jazz drums as well as those from India. The flute player’s style ranges from western classical to jazz. He also plays a traditional Arabic bamboo wind instrument.
“These are musicians who specialize in world jazz,” says Shaheen, who lives in New York City and travels with the group worldwide for about 60 shows each year. “They have an open mind to music from different parts of the world.”
To Shaheen, mixing jazz and Arabic music styles is like mixing spices in the kitchen.
“You know fusion food?” he says. “You bring in different ingredients and fuse it together. If you have good taste, it will work out. Examining sounds and seeing how they work together is like mixing spices with dishes.”