The Afro-Semitic Experience began in 1998, originally a piano-based duo with David and Warren Byrd. It started as a one-time performance, and David, having always wanted to mash up Jewish Sacred ideas with African-American sacred ideas, (who doesn’t?), brought it up one day. Warren took it as, "Oh, let's do something for a Martin Luther King service.” Phone calls started rolling in, and the Afro-Semitic experience was born.

Why mix Jewish and African ideas? “There's many different ways of looking at that question,” David muses. “Some things are philosophical, of course, but there's also musical things. African-American sacred music and some Jewish sacred music, especially Eastern European sacred music, sometimes use similar chord structures and melodic structures and sometimes they don't.” So, for David, it just made sense.

What is a typical performance for the group?

Well, it depends, because we find ourselves in different settings. Sometimes we're at church services and sometimes we're at synagogue services and sometimes we're doing concerts. We have to gear what we're doing to where we are and how we're sharing the music and also what's going on in the community we're playing for. It can also depend on the time of year, like if it's a Passover event, which celebrates the emergence of Jews from slavery into freedom.

If you were doing a Passover service, what would that performance entail?

We've done this interfaith Passover Seder a number of years down at Dickenson College. That's been interesting because we work with the students to form a Seder event, which is the meal that commemorates the liberation from Egypt. We do different readings, we play pieces in between the readings, students might recite poems, or they might sing a piece with us. Then we do some of our original pieces plus certain pieces from the Jewish and African-American liturgy that are related to the subject.

Do you do that kind of thing as often as you play a regular concert?

We never know what we're going to get the call for. We'll be in touch with an organization and they may just want a concert. The thing about our repertoire and the way that we play is that we really are some serious players. From a musical perspective, if you're, say, a jazz-head or you just like good grooves and whatnot, you might be there for that, while other people are there because they like the whole philosophical idea behind what we're doing- the idea of people who've emerged from slavery into freedom and forged their identities through finding common ground. And there is also an interfaith element because much of African-American liturgy is Christian. And not all that we do is Christian because Baba Coleman, our percussionist, is a Yoruba priest and he's introduced us to some West African ideas both musically and spiritually.

Do the other members of the band have unique musical backgrounds themselves?

Stacy Philips, he's kind of an Americana player who is not on the new album but is still with the band, plays dobro and violin and brings so many ideas to us. A kingpin of the band is the piano player, Warren Byrd. He and I have been collaborating even before '98 and the Afro-Semitic Experience, when we were just playing in jazz clubs. We just found open-minded, simpatico players between us.

What's important to you about the work that the band does?

There's a lot of different things that are important to me, and it depends on what mood I'm in and what's going on. Sometimes it's just that I'm working with high-level players who are constantly listening and making things happen. It's really important to me as a player that the music is vibrant and has vitality to it. Because we're not playing straight- ahead jazz, we work in Caribbean rhythms and klezmer rhythms. We have certain dance elements present, so what's important to me on a certain evening would be if we got people to move, to get off their seat. And then other evenings or other moments in a performance, the spiritual center or the ethos behind the piece really comes out. So it's never one thing, it's always a really interesting mélange.

Do you see any changes coming for the band?

We just finished a project, which was a lot of fun, where we recorded with a number of Jewish cantors, and I think that was a really interesting direction to take. I think anyone who's never listened to cantorial singing before will find our context interesting because we allowed our cantors to improvise as cantors, not as jazz singers.

The next project we're working on is a concert program of pieces that have been composed by jazz composers over the years as spiritual pieces. We thought that would be a really interesting program to present, with composers as diverse as John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Benny Goodman and Miles Davis. They have all contributed interesting original pieces that reflect their spiritual side, as opposed to doing a traditional spiritual like "Down By The Riverside".

Is there any direct connection between your work at the college and the Afro-Semitic Experience?

There are a few moments of intersection. For example, the college had a Holocaust memorial event, and I'd written a whole memorial service as a solo project, but the band helped me with it and performed it with me.

Is there anything else you want to share about your music in general?

It's really cool to play for people who want to hear the kind of things we're doing because very often, when people talk about religious music, they're talking about the Religious Right and Christian rock. But we're coming from a politically progressive angle, talking about deeper ideas like different communities coming together, finding unity, finding shared purpose, and finding ways to heal the wounds of time. Those are really great things that you can do as a musician. Follow that path and don't worry where it takes you, because if you're surrounded by love and support and appreciation, it's a good thing.

There's no one good path toward finding themselves as a player. If someone had told me while I was coming of age and figuring myself out as a musician that I'd be spending a lot of time playing concerts in synagogues and churches, I would have thought they were crazy, but it turned out to be a really satisfying, beautiful niche.