The Afro-Semitic Experience’s new album is a prayer for unity
The Black-Jewish fusion of “Our Feet Began to Pray” marches onward with love
In the late ’90s, bassist David Chevan was running late for a gig at the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut. It was expected that he arrive right on the hour if not earlier to set up. Scrambling in, Chevan saw that the rest of the band for that night, a drummer and keyboardist, had already begun playing. Recognizing the tune, Chevan quickly set up and finished the song with them.
The keyboardist, Warren Byrd, was surprised that Chevan knew the gospel song “Soon and Very Soon” by Andraé Crouch. Being raised in a Black fundamentalist Protestant church in Hartford, Byrd was no stranger to gospel, but Chevan was a white Jewish guy from western Mass.
As it turns out, Chevan had a knowledge and appreciation of gospel from playing gigs at Black churches when he lived in Brooklyn. Inspired by the impromptu musical exchange, Chevan suggested he share some of his own spiritual music from his Conservative Jewish upbringing with Byrd.
Byrd was skeptical at first about an interfaith-interracial collaboration. “I was like, hey man — we don’t need to be in the firing line of integration, but then I realized it was just music-making. So we got together and I really liked his pieces,” said Byrd.
Chevan’s lack of punctuality to the gig would turn out to be serendipitous as it spurred a nearly 30-year-long collaboration — a musical project that would end up being titled “The Afro-Semitic Experience.”
The group’s latest album is titled “Our Feet Began to Pray” and was released on MLK Day of 2024. The album features 14 tracks which eclectically and exquisitely blend well known pieces of African-American and Jewish spiritual music along with a handful of original compositions.
Praying feet and an album deferred
The Afro-Semitic Experience’s album was originally slated to be recorded beginning in March 2020 before being necessarily shelved amidst the COVID pandemic. Baba David Coleman, a founding member of the group and masterful percussionist and pedagogue in West African drumming in particular, passed away in 2021. “It really set us back emotionally and spiritually,” said Chevan in reflection.
Despite it all, the album eventually coalesced. “Our Feet Began to Pray” refers to the idea of bodily prayer through one’s feet. Byrd was reminded of various Bible verses which refer to supplication through the feet. Chevan recalled a famous statement by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Rabbi Heschel stated “I felt my legs were praying” referring to his march with Dr. Martin Luther King through Selma in 1965.
Chevan had a comparable spiritual moment with his wife on the streets of New Haven during the George Floyd Protests.
“The police took the entire crowd and forced us onto Route 95 — onto the highway — trying to get everybody out of the city. It completely blocked traffic. But as we were doing it, I realized that we were crossing a bridge. I realized that it was like when they were crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It was a hot, hot day and it was the Sabbath,” said Chevan, recalling the powerful moment.
Unity in the Community
Many of the tracks on “Our Feet Began to Pray” like their mashup of “We Shall Overcome” and “Oseh Shalom” center an unabashed call for defiant unity recognizing our similarities rather than differences, and embracing love above all else.
While we live in an age defined so often by polarized skepticism, divisive cynicism and inescapable pessimism, the Afro-Semitic Experience’s music reminds us that rising above it all, while difficult, is transcendent. The Black and Jewish soul and undeniable catchiness in their virtuosic music strike one as sincere and wise rather than a phony after-school special.
Byrd notes that there is indeed much to be cynical about, but the project is a major force keeping him tied to love as a central ideal. “Despite my humanity and despite my tendency to be cantankerous, I always have to take a breath and remember that love comes first,” said Byrd.
Original tunes like “Unity in the Community,” which the group has played for years, strike one as universal. They hit your ear as timeless canonical classics rather than songs penned by an under-appreciated, Connecticut-based music project.
Shedding Our Color, Loving Each Other
Byrd shared some background on the tune “Shedding Our Color.” The tune had not been released before “Our Feet Began to Pray,” and was penned by Jacob “Jerry” Jackson, an R&B singer and Christian minister from Hartford. Jackson was a marvelous R&B singer who had some regional hits, but never quite broke out.
Jackson presented Byrd with a demo tape of the tune in 2016 as a gift for Byrd and his wife, the Dutch jazz trumpeter Saskia Laroo. Byrd never got the opportunity to ask Jackson what inspired the tune originally, but as a gift it celebrated Byrd and Laroo’s love for each other as an interracial couple.
Along with Byrd who provides vocals for “Shedding Our Color,” the album also features vocals from Laroo, seasoned vocalist Orice Jenkins, as well as Cantor Meredith Greenberg.
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