Mekala Session is on the go. 

When he answers my Zoom call for an interview, he’s piloting a midsized vehicle through the Colorado desert. Its rear windshield is blown out by California sun. Ahead of the oblivion, 80 miles behind Los Angeles, Mekala rides with friend and photographer Sam Lee. 

“I'm on my way back from Coachella right now. I was playing drums for Sudan Archives. She hit me really last minute, and I learned the songs super quick. It’s funny. I wasn't even supposed to be in town. I was supposed to be working on a score that got canceled.”

‍

Mekala is a drummer, a bandleader, and the latest director for the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (after his father, Michael Session). Charged with a lifetime of jazz study and play, he charts the scrappy terrain of DIY with a particular keenness. The underground sharpens artists in that way. For both Mekala and Sudan, one of those underground scenes was Low End Theory: a storied music night bestowed residence at the Airliner club in L.A. in the mid-2000’s.

The weekly fixture emerged in the wake of producer J Dilla’s passing in 2006. Dilla was known for alchemizing some of hip-hop’s greatest productions from staggering beats, haunted vocal chops, and obscure jazz samples. Low End Theory followed, incubating several era-defining artists of the 2010’s, known for their genre ir/reverence: Flying Lotus, Daedalus, Nosaj Thing, and Tyler the Creator, to name a few. The club night ended in 2018, and in the fallout of the famed residency, a fresh crop of artists took the cultural helm, one of whom is Mekala.

‍

‍

“All the dudes that were making beats got sick of making beats and [said], ‘I want to learn how to play this stuff: learn to play piano, learn to play an instrument.’ Then all the jazz kids like me that just play drums or trumpet or keys or guitar [said], ‘I want to produce. I want to make beats.” 

Solange’s When I Get Home, Earl Sweatshirt's Some Rap Songs, Liv.e’s Girl In a Half Pearl, keiyaA’s Forever, Ya Girl, Pink Siifu’s Negro. These projects sounded an exhausting turn of the decade, imbued with sonics and references of a pointillistic quality. In a post-2010’s internet landscape suffused with—or rather—buried in data, these Black artists and their collaborators carefully mined digital wreckage for human meaning; they signaled the great paradigm shift of which Mekala is a part. 

“We have a monthly [event] called Rent’s Due [on] the last Saturday of every month,” Sam Lee explains. “It's bonkers because [of] the people that [Mekala] pulls in that have no business being in [his] damn garage. Pink Siifu shot his NEGRO’s 6 video in the garage.”

‍

‍

The NEGRO’s 6 film opens on a static shot of an SP-404, one of Roland’s premier sampling devices and a mainstay of indie hip-hop’s current sound. Footage cuts to Mekala. His eyelids flicker as he slams a set of drums, possessed. He’s accompanied by Nicholas Lee Pimentel on percussion, Chris Williams on trumpet, Park Mcallister on bass, and Grant Jefferson on guitar. In true punk fashion, Pink Siifu howls over the raging garrison:

‍

White man tryna take my shit!
Landlord tryna take my shit!
Tell the police he can eat a dick!

‍

Siifu’s performance mirrors another by the Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra, aired just a few months prior as part of PBS’s Southland Sessions. In the latter performance, writer Kamau Daáood recites a poem, backed by a throng of the Ark’s musicians—including Mekala—playing one of the band’s classic compositions: “The Great House.”

‍

‍

High above the magisterial composition, Daáood intones:

‍

This moment is improvised
Theme of passion
Silence broken into little pieces
And spread like seeds in the midst of tone

‍

“The whole point of the Ark was to always play music, especially, by local Black composers, especially in [Leimert Park],” Mekala explains. “Whether that’s someone who’s a seasoned vet or bandleader or maybe it’s their first time composing ever. My dad’s first compositions were in the Ark. That’s where he cut his teeth learning how to write. With Tapscott, that was his whole thing: [writing compositions] big and hard, super quick, by hand, super accurately.”

‍

The Ark’s first bandleader, Horace Tapscott, founded the band in 1961, seeing a need for more performance opportunities for Black artists in L.A. As part of the local Black Arts Movement, the Ark played free jazz in parks, churches, and more traditional music venues. In the band’s first 17 years, not a single Ark record was put to wax.

“The first [solo] Horace Tapscott record The Giant Is Awakened is a beautiful record, but [Tapscott] noted having a poor experience producing it because no one listens to jazz musicians. At any point in time, [he] could have gone to New York and recorded a whole bunch of records, play with whoever [he wanted] to play [with], have a career, but also be exploited by an industry that doesn't fucking listen.”

So, Tapscott avoided recording entirely…until the late ‘70s, when an Ark superfan named Tom Albach approached the bandleader to finance the recording of Ark material and release it through a specially created label called Nimbus Records. 

‍

‍

The Ark’s first official release was Flight 17, a five-track album composed of piano, string, brass, and woodwind arrangements.

The album’s title track stages a theatre of neurosis—like the infamous aircabin in Twilight Zone’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” episode. Piano keys and hammers plink in anxious strikes—like John Valentine darts his eyes between an aircraft disaster headline and flashes of lightning beyond his window. The Ark’s arrangement picks up speed, churning in a mounting procession of drums, cello, and horns—like the ghoulish creature materialized on the aircraft wing. Then “Flight 17” is in full, spiraling chaos—like John’s own flight, as its wings are torn apart by the visitant and the aircabin cries in desperate chorus. Eventually, the turbulence ends, and a warm flute solo guides Flight 17’s tranquil descent.

45 years later, under Mekala’s leadership, the Ark is still flying.

“It's super cool that this band is not a Tapscott Memorial band where we're like, ‘Let's just play his songs.’ I don’t just want to make the Sun Ra [Arkestra] comparison,” says Mekala. “People really want to hear this music. So, not only are we trying to tour, we're making mad records.”

One of these is Little Africa, a dazzling jazz odyssey guided by vocalist Sharada Shashidhar. The song, written by Linda Hill and Horace Tapscott, captures the always youthful spirit of the Ark. From the dew-fresh lilt of its first notes, Shashidhar sings “Little Africa” like day breaking through rainforest canopy:

‍

Under native stars
The pyramids have told
About the spells within your eyes
It’s oh so much
Can I express?
Prince of Africa

‍

Upon release, Shashidhar—who is of South Asian descent—expressed that “with vocal inspiration from Dwight Trible…and lyrical guidance from longtime Ark members MAIA and Jamael [Dean]” she was able to “firmly stand in and embody” the Afrocentric text.

‍

‍

When I ask Mekala how Shashidhar’s contribution fits into his vision for the Ark, he explains:

“It comes from a place of love. [Sharada] was put on to that song by Jamael Dean…There are other songs from the Ark book [with which] different people…match the timbre. There are times where [songs are] written by people and they sound better with a certain kind of voice. Trible has his own way that he sings it. So [Sharada] gives honor to that while doing her own spin on it, and it's really unique and fun and cool.”

New voices. New history-making. The new recording represents one of many ways in which Mekala is leading the Ark into the future.

‍

‍

[...]

“I just want to cut mad records of [the Ark’s] older composers. And then [record] new cuts from newer members. And have accessible score books and keep the scores of the Ark in really good condition. I want to do mad shows and go to Europe. I want to take the Ark to Africa so bad and spread the message. And [I want] our kids and their homies to be going crazy, but for us to still be in the band. I want that. I want to keep pushing it, going crazy. That's the goal.”

Mekala is on his way.

‍

About Nala Duma

Nala Duma is a musician, choreographer, and writer whose critical lens on popular culture and contemporary music takes up Blackness as the break that might rupture our attachments to Worlds, territories, and Man.

‍