UPDATE: Photos from Khalil Shaheed's show at HCA

Although jazz is distinctly American music, nothing exists in a vacuum – and certainly not jazz. For Khalil Shaheed, trumpet player, educator, bandleader and musical pilgrim, jazz is an open door for global exploration.

“I look at Miles Davis as an example,” he said in a recent interview with Healdsburg Patch. “He never rested on his laurels or was content to just play the same thing. I think music should continually grow as a person continually grows.”

Shaheed is living proof. The Pittsburg-born, Chicago-raised musician moved to California in the midst of the tumultuous 60s, and he’s never looked back. Back in those days he played with the likes of Woody Shaw and Jimi Hendrix, and toured for 6 years with Hendrix’s drummer Buddy Miles.

Now, decades later, his focus is on jazz, specifically the blending of different influences in music that jazz represents. His personal growth has now taken him (figuratively, at least) to Mali, West Africa, where “roots music” is at its rootsiest. His newest group Khalil Shaheed and Mansa Musa will be playing Saturday night, April 30, at the , in the last of three benefit concerts for the .

Other projects of Shaheed’s have included the R&B revue-styled Big Belly Blues Band, the improvisational group Open Mind, and the Mo’Rockin Project, which combines instrumentalists from Morocco (Get it? Mo’rockin’… Moroccan…) with several of the same Western musicians who play in Mansa Musa, including Richard Howell (saxophone) and Danny Armstrong (trombone). “Same concept, different part of Africa.”

Shaheed’s interest in Mali was sparked when Taj Mahal introduced him to Malian kora master Toumani Diabate a couple years ago.  The kora is an ancient 21-stringed instrument with a body of a giant calabash, and a long neck to support the strings. The musician is usually seated on the ground in front of the instrument, and picks both bass line, rhythmic figures and improvisation with the thumbs and fingers of both hands. It’s a distinctive sound, evocative of the sub-Saharan culture of Gambia, Senegal, Guinea as well as Mali, where the legendary city of Timbuktu is located.

Though Toumani, Shaheed met several other Malian musicians, including Toumani’s nephew Karamo, who like his uncle plays the kora. Another instrument from West Africa in the ensemble is the djembe, a hand-played drum capable of different tones depending on the musician. It’s similar to the more familiar doumbek or “goblet drum” of Middle Eastern music, and will be played by Karamba on Saturday night.

The third musician from Mali is guitarist Yacine Kouyate (“the elder statesman,” Shaheed calls him) whose traditional tunes form the basis of the improvisational music that Mansa Musa plays. The name of the band comes from a legendary Malian king of the 14th century; see the HJF website for more information.

The name of the concert is "Mali Meets Jazz," so I asked how, exactly, that musical meeting takes place. “The way that we do it,” explained Shaheed, “is there are traditional Malian melodies that Yacine brings in, and we try to arrange them in a way that sets the band up for improvisation, to bring it into our realm...  We also do a Western song that we’ve adapted to Malian style, so it goes both ways. We meet in the middle.”

It is perhaps as a music educator that Khalil Shaheed has had his greatest impact, founding the Oaktown Jazz Workshops to present and promote jazz to youth, and later the Jazz in the Schools program, “Get Jazzed” for the San Jose Jazz Society, a summer camp for the Stanford Jazz Workshop, and a first-grade jazz education program for the San Francisco Symphony’s “Adventures in Music” program.

“When I started the Festival in 1999,” said Jessica Felix, “Khalil was one of the first people I called to help with the jazz education programs. He always just makes things happen for us. Kids like him, and he likes kids -- he’s a great spirit.” As a consequence, many young people who passed through Healdsburg schools in the last 10 years have good memories of Khalil Shaheed and the music he's brought into their classrooms through the Oaktown Jazz Workshops.

Khalil Shaheed and Mansa Musa have played for the public only a few times; the Saturday night concert will be the fifth, by Shaheed’s count. “I haven’t even put up a website for this band yet, it’s that new. It’s a concept – it’s really a lot of fun, everyone involved really enjoys doing it.”

Exposing a local audience to such esoteric music might bring with it some risk, but Shaheed has performed in Healdsburg before, and seems confident the show will be appreciated. “I would like people to come out with an open mind, and maybe hear something that haven’t heard before, and see if they like it.”

This echoes Jessica Felix’s own invitation to the Saturday night performance, at 7 and 9 p.m., at the Healdsburg Center for the Arts.

“It’s the type of band that’s never played up here before,” she said. “It’ll be a really new experience, even for me.”  

Tickets for the 9 p.m. show are still available through the Healdsburg Jazz Festival website and at the HCA gallery, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Cost is $25 – as their website says, “cheaper than a bus ticket to Timbuktu.”