Cuban Jazz: Rabiah Kabir Trio at Wave

Rabiah Kabir is a Jazz flute player who uses her instrument, skill in storytelling and unique style to bend the expectations of what “Jazz” music really is.

Born and raised in the East Bay, Rabiah draws from her lived experience as a mixed Black woman to create music that is meditative, contemplative and conceptual. For her, musical memory begins in the kitchen, with her dad playing the sounds of Charles Mingus, Phillip Glass, Erik B. & Rakim, Dead Can Dance, Toots and the Maytals, Compay Segundo and Natacha Atlas (to name a few), as he cooked dinner in their Berkeley home.

As she dived into the Bay Area Jazz scene, she noticed how few women surrounded her, a problem that has plagued Jazz since its inception at the turn of the 20th century. Her debut album, “Jezebel: Rewritten” and related Honors Thesis paper from Stanford University, “The Jezebel Flute”, explores themes of Black womanhood and feminism, a core part of Jazz history often overlooked. She hopes the project carves a new place for scholarship surrounding flute players, power and Black feminist artistic expression. Her thesis, winner of the 2025 Stanford University George Fredrickson award, is published on Stanford’s Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity department page. The album,“Jezebel: Rewritten” is available for streaming on October 24, 2025.

Rabiah has had the incredible opportunity to collaborate with artists like Murray Low, Zheniia, José Andrés, Taleen, Jesús Díaz and Edgardo Cambon. She is unbelievably grateful for the vibrant and diverse musical community of the Bay Area and strives to celebrate its influence in her music.

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