Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra

The Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra was an American spiritual/free-jazz big band led by pianist/conductor Horace Tapscott. The Arkestra made the 1978 UGMAA albums Flight 17 and The Call, followed by the 1979 Nimbus West release Live at the I.U.C.C.

Members: Adele Sebastian, Archie Johnson, David Bryant, Everett Brown Jr., Herbert Callies, Horace Tapscott, James Andrews, Jesse Sharps, Kafi Larry Roberts, Kamonta Lawrence Polk, Lester Robertson, Linda Hill, Louis Spears, Michael Session, Red Callender, William Madison

Background

The ensemble that became the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra formed in late 1961 in Los Angeles when pianist Horace Tapscott assembled a small rehearsal band with pianist/singer Linda Hill, trombonist Lester Robertson, alto saxophonist Jimmy Woods, and bassist David Bryant. Tapscott returned to Los Angeles after leaving Lionel Hampton’s band and shifted from trombone to piano. Robertson, Woods, and Bryant knew Tapscott through the Gerald Wilson Orchestra, while Hill hosted sessions at her home near 75th Street and Central Avenue.

The musicians rehearsed as often as five nights a week at Hill’s home and Tapscott’s garage near 56th Street and Avalon Boulevard. Tapscott added spirituals and compositions by Black composers to the band book. Members also developed original compositions and arrangements. The musicians made a home recording of Tapscott’s “The Golden Pearl” in 1961 with an early septet.

Tapscott organized the Underground Musicians Association in 1963 to extend the band’s activity into concerts and music instruction across South Central Los Angeles. The ensemble played weekend sets at South Park by the mid-1960s. The musicians mounted a flatbed truck in Watts amid the August 1965 uprising. UGMA expanded to include other art forms and adopted the name Underground Musicians and Artists Association by the late 1960s.

The band appeared as the Community Cultural Orchestra in 1970 and the Community Cultural Arkestra that August. Tapscott and the association adopted Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra in summer 1971, while UGMAA became the Union of God’s Musicians and Artists Ascension. Arkestra members played free concerts at Widney High and began a monthly last-Sunday series at Immanuel United Church of Christ in April 1973, at 85th Street and Holmes Avenue.

In 1973, Tapscott and the Arkestra scored cues for As Above, So Below, an independent political drama by Tulsa director Larry Clark about a Black Marine who returns from Vietnam with a radicalized political outlook and becomes a Los Angeles community organizer. The Arkestra also made soundtrack cues for Sweet Jesus, Preacher Man, a 1973 blaxploitation crime-action film about a Black hitman who infiltrates a Watts church disguised as a Baptist minister and investigates threats to a kingpin’s territory. 

In January 1976, Tapscott brought more than twenty Arkestra members to Audiotronics Recording Studios in Covina for a six-composition studio session. The Arkestra continued the Immanuel residency and played Century City Playhouse in 1977, where Tom Albach heard the ensemble for the first time.

Tapscott sold private Arkestra cassettes to Albach, who founded Nimbus Records to record Tapscott and the band. Albach recorded the Arkestra in April 1978 at Hollywood Sage and Sound and United Western Recorders for Flight 17 and The Call.

Discography:

• Flight 17 (1978)
• The Call (1978 • Horace Tapscott Conducting the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra)
• Live at the I.U.C.C (2LP, 1979 • Horace Tapscott with the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra)