Khari Wynn is a busy man. He may be the most-heard/least-recognized musician in Memphis right now, rarely stepping into the spotlight but backing artists as diverse as Hope Clayburn’s Soul Scrimmage, Frog Squad, Level 3, Will Lang, Miz Stefani, Circle Birds, Julia Magness & Her Mane Men, Deepstaria Enigmatica, and the locals who play with drummer Steve Hirsh when he’s in town (full disclosure: I join him in those last two combos). And, as many saw at this year’s RiverBeat Music Festival, he still sometimes plays with a little group called Public Enemy (PE).
That was a highlight of the festival, as Wynn kicked off PE’s set with a solo guitar rendition, Jimi Hendrix-style, of the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” It was a scorcher that left the crowd screaming for more. Yet few realized that his rendition of that very song years earlier had helped land Wynn a job as PE’s guitarist for over a decade. “I recorded that before I got into Public Enemy,” says Wynn. “Professor Griff, one of the founders [of Public Enemy], had a rap/rock band called 7th Octave, and we recorded two records. One came out in 2004 and is called Se7enth Degree, and the last track on that is me doing a version of the Black National Anthem.” That in turn led to more opportunities. “At that time, Public Enemy was looking to add live musicians to their live show. So Griff was like, ‘Well, I’m working with this guitar player …’”
Wynn went on to play with Public Enemy for many years, eventually becoming their musical director on tour, before settling back in Memphis again. And, as we saw this spring, that association is ongoing, if not as frequent as before. But even while he was actively touring with the rap supergroup, he had his own irons in the fire back here in Memphis.
Most of the bands noted above notwithstanding, Wynn’s personal projects are of a more experimental, instrumental nature. That’s clear enough from the group names and pseudonyms he’s used over the years: Misterioso Africano, the New Saturn Collective, Solstice, James Equinox, the Energy Disciples, or, most recently, the Equinox Frequency Wavelength Consortium — words that speak of transcending earthly concerns, evoking the hidden forces that shape us. There are echoes of Sun Ra in Wynn’s love of music that breaks with conventions in favor of sheer sonic impact, but also other influences. His tastes are a curious mixture of jazz, rock, and the avant garde that one doesn’t often hear in Memphis, or anywhere.
The jazz part is easy to understand, as Wynn’s father, Ron Wynn, is an astute music critic and author who wrote for The Commercial Appeal for many years. “I had a very deep interest in jazz because my dad was a jazz writer,” says Wynn. “But I never went to U of M jazz school or anything like that. I could read chord charts, but I don’t read music notation. So in terms of jazz, I’m not able to hold up the tradition all the way. But I still like instrumental stuff. And, you know, it doesn’t necessarily have to be called jazz. There’s the free, avant garde stuff, and the kind of spiritual stuff that Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane were doing that didn’t necessarily have all those changes. And then I got into some of the late ’60s/early ’70s jazz-rock that John McLaughlin and Santana did, so I figured I could do my own version of those things that came off of the jazz tree but weren’t necessarily straight-ahead jazz.”
There’s also plenty of metal-adjacent music in Wynn’s background, as befitting someone who first took to guitar in the ’90s. “I wanted to be a bass player,” he says of his younger days, “but the strings were so thick! I was about 12 or 13, and I was like, ‘Man, there’s no way I’m gonna be able to even get a sound. Let me just try guitar.’ And at first, I was very much into rock. Obviously, I was a big Hendrix fan.” Other groups that inspired him included Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, and Led Zeppelin.
But his tastes and abilities soon took another turn. “Then, when I was about 16 or 17, I started playing at the Saint Andrew A.M.E. Church in Memphis. And they were just like, ‘Yeah, we don’t really need any of the rock, actually. We need you to play some chords and learn about progressions.’ So that’s what got me going down that path.”
All of the above influences are apparent in Wynn’s current project, the Energy Frequency Wavelength Consortium, who’ve released one single this year, “Serenity’s Lullaby,” penned by Wynn, and who sell a new full-length CD at their shows, Live at the B-Side, recorded at a 2021 benefit for the now-defunct P&H Cafe.
While the single is a jazz-rock odyssey that offers horn and guitar solos over some amorphous chords, other tracks on the album make Wynn’s disparate influences even more stark. Take the medley of two Thelonious Monk tunes, “Epistrophy” and “Bemsha Swing,” which begins with a guitar and drum freak out, becomes a punchy rock re-casting of Monk’s melodies, then veers off into full metal/hardcore riffage, complete with double-kick drum ferocity, even as vestiges of Monk still scream over it all.
For Wynn, it’s all part of a continuum of music that constantly aims to break new ground. That even goes for his work with Chuck D, Flavor Flav, et al. “Public Enemy actually is, in its own way, very avant garde,” says Wynn. “They would take avant garde stuff and organize it the best way they heard it. So they would have, like, a James Brown groove, and then they would sample an Albert Ayler horn thing, only they would make it rhythmically fit the James Brown sample. It took me a long time to figure that out. It was a completely unorthodox approach to hip-hop tracks. And when I was on the road with PE, I was always listening to Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, and they were like, ‘Man, how do you know about old-ass stuff from the ’60s that we sample?’”
The overlap was most fully realized when Chuck D contributed vocals to an Energy Disciples track, “Eternity’s Promise,” which Wynn plans to remix for a new project in the works, Galactic Cosmonauts, slated for release early next year. Meanwhile, he’ll be around town, playing with the many bands that rely on him, as when Hope Clayburn plays Beale Street on 901 Day, or with Level 3’s Wednesday night residence at Louis Connelly’s Bar for Fun Times & Friendship, or, most tellingly, when the Equinox Frequency Wavelength Consortium plays on — you guessed it — the eve of the autumnal equinox, September 21st, at B-Side. It’s all part of Wynn’s drive to stay active, and to stay creative. And good luck keeping up with him. As Wynn puts it, “When you’re one of those musicians that they call ‘lifers,’ you’ve just got to keep going. There’s always a project, whether it’s your own or someone else’s. There’s always stuff to do.”