Way back in the 90s, a lasting friendship was born out of jazz. Warren Byrd was playing piano at a jam session at a now-defunct jazz bastion in the Hartford CT area, and David Chevan sat in for a tune or two on bass. Recognizing the same spirit of musical open-mindedness in each others’ playing, and both fond of the balancing act of going somewhere that has no tonal center, but snapping right back to being as magnificently tonal as possible, Warren began to play in David’s band, and David occasionally accompanied Warren on the odd gig.

And so it went for a while, a gig here and a gig there, as it goes with jazz musicians. And then, one day David was late to a gig that Warren had booked. When he showed up in the room, the band was already playing the old Andraé Crouch gospel song “Soon and Very Soon”. David managed to slip off the case on his bass and finish the tune with them. “I don't know, it seemed impressive to them at the moment that this little white boy knew that song too,” David recalls. “And at the set break, I threw out the idea to Warren, wouldn't it be interesting to explore playing jazz and sacred music together and exploring the Jewish and African American traditions?”

And The Afro-Semitic Experience was conceived, just like that.

25 or so years later (who’s counting?), add four phenomenal musicians to the mix and The Afro-Semitic Experience is a now-legendary band that combines an eclectic array of styles, sophisticated musicianship, good songwriting, deep grooves, and years of friendship with a simple message: Unity in the Community. Their music has been heard around the United States—the group has performed at festivals, in churches, synagogues, colleges,  and wherever people come together to share their love and respect for community.

ASE’s upcoming album, Our Feet Began to Pray (Jan 19, 2024, Reckless DC Music) is the latest to advance the concept of Unity in the Community. The concept for the title song came to David during a protest march after the death of George Floyd, as the New Haven police were moving the crowd across a bridge. David was struck by the similarity between the Floyd protests and the civil rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, after which both Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and John Lewis referred to the experience as ‘praying with my feet’. “Lyrically, that's really what drove a lot of the creation of the song My Feet Began to Pray,” explains Chevan. “You know, this idea that here you are, on a bridge and you're making a decision, are you going to cross over? Are you going to walk away? What kind of decisions are you going to make?”

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The themes of marching by foot, and of journeys to foment change are intimately entwined in the formative histories of the Jewish and African diasporas. Both peoples have stories and songs--secular and sacred--that encompass these experiences. In the African American tradition, there were several vital experiences such as: Middle Passage, Underground Railroad, the Great Migration, Civil Rights Marches/Freedom Rides.  The two-thousand-year diasporic condition of the Jewish people creates a similar set of nexus points such as: the Exodus from Egypt, the European expulsions, the emigration to America, and the Nazi Holocaust. The songs on this album explore and synthesize these stories to tell a larger narrative of struggle and triumph.

The first single from the album, Unity in the Community, comes from a phrase often uttered by ASE’s late percussionist and founding member Baba David Coleman. Co-written by Warren and David, it’s an anthemic song that people love hearing and singing along with during The Afro-Semitic Experience’s concerts. The album version features a chorus of gospel singers with a Jewish Cantor- a truly multicultural offering.

Shedding Our Colors was composed by Warren’s late brother-in-law Jerry Jackson, an R&B singer who had a minor hit in the early 1960s, for Warren and his wife, trumpeter Saskia Laroo (also an ASE member). Jerry Jackson was a gospel preacher from a well known family of gospel preachers in the Hartford area. After pursuing his dream of being an R&B singer, Jerry decided to become a composer of gospel music instead. The original version of the song is imbued with Christian devotion; Warren changed some of the lyrics to make the song a little bit more interfaith and wrote a new arrangement for The Afro-Semitic Experience. “His version of the song was very much a ballad, in crooner style, like Jerry Vale or Peabo Bryson.” says Warren. “And I turned it into something more like a nice swinging number, like Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole would sing- at a nice peppy tempo. It’s a song of meeting each other at the soul instead of at the surface. You can't totally ignore the surface. But somewhere beneath the surface, is something more essential to what is you and me- what is we? And, it just had to swing!”

“The highest we can be… Unity in the Community,” sings Warren. Indeed, The Afro-Semitic Ensemble unites us through that oldest of uniters, music. Let’s dance!

The Afro-Semitic Experience, “Our Feet Began to Pray” will be released on all platforms on Jan 19, 2024, in honor of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King.