Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids

From Antioch to Africa

Idris Ackamoor, born Bruce Baker on January 9, 1951 in Chicago, studied saxophone with Clifford King at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and played alto in Cecil Taylor's Black Music Ensemble. The Pyramids began as an offshoot, with Margaux Simmons and the bassist Kimathi Asante, joined by the drummer Donald Robinson; the founding year is given as 1970 by SFJazz and 1972 by Strut and The Quietus. In late 1972 they left on an education-abroad plan, through Paris and Amsterdam and then, from December, Tangier, Dakar, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia. They self-released Lalibela (1973, four-track, recorded in a living room), King of Kings (March 1974, Chillicothe, Ohio) and Birth/Speed/Merging (1976, San Francisco), pressing 500 or 1,000 at a time and selling them from car trunks; Ackamoor said we were DIY before DIY came around.

The Pyramids moved to the Bay Area in 1974, opened for Weather Report in Dayton and Cincinnati, and played their last concert at the UC Berkeley Jazz Festival in 1977, when Ackamoor founded the Cultural Odyssey nonprofit in San Francisco. A 2007 reunion concert and a 2010 European tour led to Otherworldly (recorded 2011), We Be All Africans (2016, Strut), An Angel Fell (2018), Shaman! (2020), Afro Futuristic Dreams (2023) and Artistic Being (2025). Ascent of the Nether Creatures, recorded in 1980, appeared in 2014. Ackamoor, who also acts and tap dances, names Cecil Taylor as his biggest influence.