Artists

It's 1967, and The Afro-Caravan, formed and lead by 21-year-old Wali Rahman (performing under the stage name Wali King), brings a new kind of percussion-based jazz, informed by African traditions, to Central Texas. As comfortable and accepted at Austin's downtown hippy haven, Vulcan Gas CompanyThe Vulcan is Austin's first successful hippie music hall, opening in 1967 in an old warehouse at 316 Congress Avenue and closing in 1970., as at Austin's predominantly Black east-side hot spot, The Afro, the hip Afro-jazz group garners a following that crosses age and racial lines. Under its original name, Afro Caravan Players, the group is the inaugural act when The Afro first opens in October 1967. By December '67, the group changes its name to The Afro-Caravan. Sonobeat's relationship with The Afro-Caravan begins almost a year later, when Sonobeat co-founders Bill Josey Sr. and Rim Kelley (Bill Josey Jr.) see the group perform at the Vulcan.

Bill Sr. arranges to record The Afro-Caravan during a variety show live performance on Tuesday, July 30, 1968, at Austin's Pan American Hillside Theater, but for reasons not documented in the Sonobeat archives, the session is delayed until Saturday, August 10th, when Sonobeat records the group before a live audience at HemisFair '68HemisFair '68 is the official World's Fair held in San Antonio, Texas, from April 6th through October 6th, 1968. The fair celebrates the 250th anniversary of San Antonio's founding in 1718. More than 30 nations and 15 corporations host pavilions at the fair, whose theme is The Confluence of Civilizations in the Americas in honor of the many different nations that settled the region., the World's Fair held in San Antonio, Texas. By the way, Wali is no World's Fair newbie: at age 17, he performs in a 16-piece percussion group at the 1964-'65 New York World's Fair. Sonobeat records The Afro-Caravan at the Night Light, an open air cabaret at Project Y, HemisFair's youth pavilion, where the group regularly performs on weekends during almost the entire run of the fair. Comin' Home Baby and Afro-Twist each are recorded in just one take through Sonobeat's custom-built portable 10-input stereo mixer feeding a quarter-inch 2-track Ampex 354. The Afro-Caravan's resulting 45 RPM stereo single is Sonobeat's only commercial release of a live performance by any artist. In 2021, we find a copy of the single offered on eBay for $120, perhaps demonstrating the timelessness of The Afro-Caravan's music.

Wali, who speaks Swahili and Arabic, is originally from the Bronx in New York City. He enlists in the Army, does training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and then is assigned to Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin. There he meets his future bandmates Robert Moore, J. Murray, Ronald Nance, and Ray Lewis, all also airmen. Adding a University of Texas freshman, all members of The Afro-Caravan have a deep interest in rhythmic instruments, particularly drums of all types, but also of other traditional African instruments, like flutes, as well as Indian tablas. It's the unique combination of The Afro-Caravan's instrumentation, rhythm, and melodies that make the combo "romantic – thrilling – appealing – satisfying", quoting from producer Bill Sr.'s liner notes for the group's Sonobeat album Home Lost and Found (The Natural Sound). When the group begins performing, each member uses his African name – Wali, Kafi, J, Be, Akbar, and Kido (the group starts as a sextet) – purposefully avoiding their "slave names", as Wali reveals in a December 10, 1967, University of Texas Daily Texan article.

Sessions for Home Lost and Found begin on January 21, 1969. The sessions – which span several consecutive evenings – yield seven tracks, ranging in length from four minutes to over eleven minutes, the longer songs allowing the band to stretch musically. Five songs are Afro-Caravan originals. Sonobeat records the album on its Scully 280 half-inch 4-track recorder using the spacious den of the Josey family home in northwest Austin as the "studio". Close-miking the instruments provides good stereo separation and makes the room acoustics unobtrusive. Recording engineer Rim Kelley uses Sonobeat's custom steel plate reverb to enhance the mix-down masters.

By June '69, Sonobeat issues a limited non-commercial vinyl advance pressing of the album under the artist name "Wali and the Afro-Caravan". Sonobeat's "white jacket" release is intended primarily to attract a sale of the master recordings to a national label. That desired sale occurs more than a year later, in August 1970, when Liberty Records – which has purchased rights to Johnny Winter's The Progressive Blues Experiment from Sonobeat in '68 and has now merged with United Artists Records – buys the Afro-Caravan album master. Sonobeat retains rights to The Afro-Caravan's 45 RPM single, since neither of the songs on the single appears on the album. In December 1970, Liberty/UA releases Home Lost and Found (The Natural Sound) on its Solid State jazz label. The album features a gatefold jacket with highly stylized photography by L'Azul and Renate Taylor. The album cover shows the silhouettes of six performers, which was the group's original configuration when founded, but when Sonobeat records Wali and the Afro-Caravan, the group is a quintet. The album receives – and, although long out of print, even today receives – excellent reviews, and Wali's arrangement of the traditional Hail the King is considered an Afro-jazz classic. The Afro-Caravan is still vital and musically relevant in the 21st century, validating the adage "everything old is new again".

Bill Josey Sr. produces a second album with Wali and the Afro-Caravan in a series of sessions from January 29th to February 1st, 1971. The tracks also are recorded at Sonobeat's Western Hills Drive studio, but this time in the recording suite the Joseys have built on the isolated ground level of their split level home. The untitled album features four songs on side 1, including an expanded remake of The Afro-Caravan's Sonobeat single Afro-Twist, and a 19 minute three-song suite going by the working title Shades Of Africa on side 2. Bill returns to Liberty/UA Records with this new Afro-Caravan album, but Liberty/UA passes, likely because the first Afro-Caravan album, though critically acclaimed, has not sold well enough to invest in a follow-up album. Bill then circulates demos of the album on audio cassettes to other national labels, beginning his trend away from the much more expensive vinyl "advance" pressings Sonobeat has previously used for its demo albums. Ultimately, turned down by the national labels, Bill elects not to release the album on Sonobeat Records itself for a purely financial reason: albums cost significantly more to master, press, package, and market than 45 RPM singles and are very difficult to sell in sufficient numbers in regional markets to make a profit. And specialty jazz albums are even more difficult to sell than rock or country albums. Although the second Afro-Caravan album is as good as, if not better than, Home Lost and Found, it remains unreleased.

Today, Wali (now known as Obara Wali Rahman Ndiaye) is founder and CEO of International Afrikan-American Ballet (Brooklyn, New York), founder and artistic director of Drumsong African Ballet Theatre (New York, New York), and 2014 special honoree at the 12th Annual Drummers Summit (Brooklyn, New York).