Creative Bonds

Afro-Zen Allstars celebrate a decade of interpreting the golden sounds of pan-African music.

The Afro-Zen Allstars celebrate their 10th anniversary amid the baubles, skeletons and fairy lights of Révéler Experiences this Friday. It is a validating milestone for a band built on the creative instrumental reinterpretation of Pan-African music by crack local musicians.

But for founding guitarist and leader George M. Lowe, the group’s most significant breakthrough came at the end of last November, when they headlined the 2024 retirement party for masterful Ethiopian singer Mahmoud Ahmed in Washington, D.C.

“I’m still walking on air,” Lowe says.

His excitement may be a mystery to most American pop audiences, but in Ethiopian music circles, Ahmed’s is a name to conjure with. A master of ecstatic Amharic music, his five-octave vocal range soared across circular rhythms in pentatonic scales. His artistry highlights the landmark Ethiopiques series of CDs (1990s-2000s), which were largely responsible for rescuing the “golden age” music of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, from dour revolutionary obscurity.

 

Lowe was drawn to the Arabic-tinged, North African sound as a longtime member of local band Rattlemouth.

“When I started, we were doing nothing but original art rock stuff,” he recalls. “By the time I left the band, we were playing pretty much exclusively international music. But we were never more than a five-piece. I wanted to hear the music expanded, to do things I could not do. I thought about if for a long time … and for a long time.”

The late musician Paul Watson was very influential in giving Lowe the confidence to make the leap into leadership.

“I knew I could either seek out a group of people solely dedicated to the band, or I could look for the best players, knowing they were busy, and put together a stable of skilled subs,” he explains. The former would have been easier, but he chose the latter. “Everyone makes their living on music. They are always busy. Rounding up people for a gig, or practice, is much more complicated than I anticipated.”

By the second gig, six core members of the band (the guitars and horns) were in place. Lead guitarist Chris Vasi had asked about joining at Lowe’s final Rattlemouth gig. Saxophonists John Lilly and Chris Sclafani and trombonist Toby Whitaker all played the band’s debut gig at former venue Balliceaux. Bassist Brian Cruise, percussionist Keith Cables, and drummer Scott Milsted complete the current lineup. According to the band website, this weekend Pete Anderson is filling in on trombone and Hunter Duke will be extending the percussion section.

 

“Other bands I have been in have been fraught with tension and angst, especially during recordings sessions,” Lowe says. “But we went into the studio to record [2017’s cheekily named “Afro-Zen Allstars Greatest Hits”] and it was like a party. We finished in an afternoon.”

Lowe does all the arranging and writes all the charts.

“A bunch of the music we do is stuff I have found on records and YouTube. Nothing we play initially fits our instrumentation,” he says. “The challenge is making those melodies, a lot of which are vocal, shine in without lyrics.”

He notes that Africa has so many styles of music and a wealth of “extraordinarily gifted players and composers” that are almost never heard here.

“These African geniuses are the real heroes. A lot of the stuff that we play was composed by people who faced incredible brutality, and yet it is so joyous and positive,” Lowe says. “In a small but real way, exposing people to art forms from another culture shows that we have more in common than what separates us.”

Expanding songbook

While initially centered on Ethiopian music, the Afro-Zen songbook has expanded to over a dozen countries including South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Cameroon, Sudan, Morocco, Benin, Mali, Senegal.

“We have over 100 tunes in the songbook,” Lowe says. “We do interpretations, not covers. Only one song retains a mostly original arrangement. The band will dive in and try anything. Everything is embraced.”

Occasionally, he gets pushback from someone about authenticity. They are, after all, an American band comprised predominantly of white people with European ancestry playing music that originated from people of another culture from another continent. Even if “Ethiopian Jazz” is openly proclaiming its multicultural nature, it is hard with modern sensitivities to avoid the whiff of cultural appropriation.

However, the band’s passionate dedication to the music was recognized where it matters most, in front of the 1,000-plus Ethiopians at Mahmoud Ahmed’s celebration.

“They were supposed to sell 860 tickets,” Lowe says. “I found out afterwards the actual number was over 1,500.”

Because he had appeared as a guest on the most popular TV show in Ethiopia, streamed around the world, Lowe was something of a celebrity. “All these people had seen me. I could not count the number who wanted to shake my hand and say thank you.”

 

Afro-Zen Allstars played the longest set of the evening. It was a dream night, both a culmination oi a decade of work and an opening to new collaborations.

At one point, the master of ceremonies asked Lowe the obvious question: Why did these American musicians fall in love with the music of Mahmood Ahmed? How do you relate to these songs? Do you understand the words?

“I told him that I speak no Amharic,” Lowe says. “But the music speaks for itself.”

Afro-Zen Allstars’s tenth anniversary show takes place at Révéler Experiences on Friday, Jan. 31 at 8 p.m. General admission tickets are $17.50.

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