Daud EL-Bakara

Daud El Bakara was born in Philadelphia PA. As a native Philadelphian, he was exposed at an early age to the rich musical history of the city and specifically to their uniquely rich jazz tradition. His parents exposed him to the arts at an early age taking him to, museums, to the theatre, arts festivals and especially musical events. Daud developed an interest in music from an early age and began playing the trumpet at 11 years of age, receiving private instruction as well as playing in the school bands.He performed in bands which played a large number of musical genres from marching bands to Classical. He also joined the Philadelphia Clef Club which is a performance arts center and music school.With the clef club, Daud was not only able to interact with some of the cities finest young musicians and be mentored and study with many local and national Jazz Masters, but also fine tune his skills as a trumpet player and focus his concentration on Jazz ensemble playing.He also began an intense research and study of the history of the trumpet, of Jazz as an art form and of all the great jazz legends, absorbing the works of Clifford Brown, Woody Shaw, and Philadelphia natives John Coltrane and Lee Morgan.Daud experienced a rapid development in his musical prowess with him being noted by music teachers, native musicians and others as a child prodigy with enormous musical talent and great potential as an instrumentalist as well as a composer.During those years, Philadelphia underwent a great revitalization of the Cities artistic outlets, building several arts centers as well as promoting the development of several of its established music venues. This afforded Daud a wide variety of performance outlets and much more exposure to the public at large.After graduating High School he attended the Temple University music program and studied under trumpet legend Terrell Stafford. He continued to perform at many venues locally throughout the city. After several offers to interrupt his studies to perform full time, he finally accepted a position as trumpet player for the music group Kindred, touring nationally and internationally.