He has been a frequent performer and speaker at both the WinterStar Symposium and the Starwood Festival, where he performed with lifelong friend and master drummer Babatunde Olatunji in 1997, and where El-Dabh's concert of traditional sacred African music was recorded in 2002. In 2003 he was part of a three-day tribute to the late Olatunji called the SpiritDrum Festival, with Muruga Booker, Badal Roy, Sikiru Adepoju, Jeff Rosenbaum, and Jim Donovan of Rusted RootIn 2005 he performed and ran workshops at Unyazi 2005 in Johannesburg[https://web.archive.org/web/20070930201437/http://www.southafrica.info/what_happening/conf_expo/unyazi2005.htm, which was the first electronic music symposium and festival to be hosted in Africa.