Ten Points Just for the Name

It takes guts to mix the music of your childhood with music from another time and place. Many of us wouldn't want to: If the music of your people is big band swing, for example, you kind of either love it or hate it and leave it at that. But say you're from Illinois, and you're a jazz guy with an open mind. Or consider a young Moroccan lute player discovering Art Blakey. The Mo' Rockin' Project's main characters are trumpet player Khalil Shaheed, from Chicago, and Yassir Chadly, a multi-instrumentalist born in Casablanca. Both are now longtime Bay Area residents, and together, they fuse North American and North African sounds featuring oud, gembre, and dembek in addition to sax, drums, and bass. A recent CD, Sahaba, attests to the band's social consciousness: Shaheed and Chadly are Muslim, and in their desire to dispel negative stereotypes of the Islamic world, they named the CD for a word that means "companion."
Sat., Jan. 19, 8 p.m., 2008