Idris Ackamoor’s Afrofuturist Theater of Sound

The plan is not a recital. It is a happening—part theater, part ritual, part dance-floor communion—led by a saxophonist who has spent five decades making music that refuses to sit still. "I call myself an artistic being," Idris Ackamoor says, describing the continuum that stretches from his horn and piano to the page and back again. "My apartment has become my home studio. I use the piano, my saxophone, and voice as instruments to create music... Sometimes I might be just improvising on the piano, and in that process, I come up with a melody or a rhythm that then gets transferred onto paper... like a child that begins to walk and matures through the process."

The phrase "artistic being" is more than a mantra; it's a method. "I want my sound to be identifiable," he explains. "When someone hears me playing tenor or alto saxophone, [I want] it to stand out... so when you hear me play it, that's me and no one else." That insistence on a personal fingerprint extends to the way he builds pieces: "We don't just sit and play with head melodies or do standard jazz improvisation. The compositions flow smoothly from one to the next, creating a seamless transition. It's not about just sitting quietly... this isn't it."

Ackamoor's theater roots are inseparable from his music. He speaks of longtime collaborators Rhodessa Jones and Danny Glover not as guests but as catalytic voices within his sonic dramaturgy. "I've always said that both Danny and Rhodessa have two of the most unique voices in theater," he notes. "When you hear Danny Glover's voice, you can tell that's him... And then Rhodessa also has this amazing spoken word voice that, when you hear Rhodessa speak, you know that's Rhodessa." Their presence nudges his band, the Pyramids, toward a fuller palette—music as staging, narrative as groove.

That blend of sound and story is captured in pieces like "The Grandma Cole Story," a family tale handed down by an elder and transformed into a tone poem. Ackamoor recalls the image of a child—his ancestor—briefly let out of a slave ship's hold, freeing caged birds before suffering brutal punishment. "The image symbolizes resilience in the face of adversity," he says. "She embraced the mixture that's going on... the very multiculturalism of the African American experience and our experience as Americans." In Ackamoor's hands, memory becomes choreography: melody as movement, rhythm as testimony.

If the staging looks forward, the engine that powers it looks both backward and outward. "Afrofuturism draws much of its inspiration from Africa and Egypt," he says, tipping his hat to Sun Ra and writers like Octavia Butler while grounding his own approach in early-'70s travel and study. "I believed I was simply making music from my heart and soul. However, my nine months in Africa deeply influenced and inspired me... This rhythm foundation... mixed with jazz, combined with avant-garde elements." The formula is less equation than ethos: "That's how you reach the people in their twenties and thirties—keep the tradition evolving."

Onstage, that evolution is deliberately porous. Ackamoor favors events that blur the line between performers and audience. "This is about involvement, participation—breaking down the wall in theater terms—to make the audience part of the experience," he says. "You can dance, engage, and sometimes we'll bring the music to the crowd." The idea is to seed momentum: band to floor, floor back to band. "After that, everyone [is] dancing and moving... I think that is the future in many ways."

The saxophonist's catalogue reflects that future-minded past. With the Pyramids—and across recordings like Shaman! (Strut Records, 2020) and Artistic Being (Strut Records, 2025)—Ackamoor has traced a through-line that runs from Chicago to West Africa to the Bay Area and back into the Black avant-garde. Yet he's less concerned with labels than with impact. "I'm composing every day," he says. "The music is cinematic. I think about the flow, about how one piece leads to another. We build sets that move like a film."

His protest work follows the same logic of clarity and propulsion. "Without a doubt, Fela has been an inspiration to me," he says, connecting the directness of "Zombie" to his own composition "Police Dem." "Police dem, the knee on your neck... Police dem shoot you so young." The lyric is blunt but not one-dimensional. "Police them some good most bad... we all the same," he adds. "I really get to the meat of it all through the human perspective." The groove invites you in; the words ask you to stay awake.

Ackamoor thinks about posterity with equal specificity. He speaks with satisfaction about an arrangement that keeps his masters preserved and his publishing intact. "My legacy now resides with Strut Records, stored in their vaults," he explains. "They'll be releasing my music for the next 20 years." It's a practical plan and a philosophical one: a way to ensure the music's future while keeping the songwriter's rights where they belong. The daily practice, though, is tactile and immediate—reeds, keys, breath, voice—an artist shaping hours that in turn shape the work. "My days flow in a single arc of composition and rehearsal," he says. "Sometimes I'll be at the piano and a rhythm appears; sometimes it's a melodic fragment on the horn. I follow it until it grows." He hears the band as a single organism: "We're not trying to spotlight individuals just to spotlight them. The ensemble carries the energy, and the improvisation is part of the story we're telling."

Asked what guides that story across decades, Ackamoor returns to a north star that sounds like advice to his younger self and a manifesto for anyone encountering his music for the first time. "Keep pushing forward!" he says, laughing at the simplicity of it. "You're on the right path!" And then, in a reminder that the point of all this ceremony is connection, he adds: "Come ready to participate. This isn't music that sits in a chair. It moves —and it wants you to move with it."

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