Description
Members of the dispossessed, wont you lend me your ears!
This is the repeated call and the rallying chorus of the nearly 40-minute centerpiece to composer and percussionist Asher Gamedzes new album Constitution. The expansive double album, a minoritarian fellowship in breath, is Gamedzes follow-up to 2023s Turbulence and Pulse, and his first with The Black Lungs, a ten-piece ensemble. The album recorded in one day at Cape Towns Sound and Motion Studios is an elaboration of the possibilities of autonomous constitution in and through polyrhythmic, modal, large ensemble music.
Gamedze holds down duties on the drum kit, joining with Ru Slayen (percussion), Sean Sanby (bass), and Nobuhle Ashanti (piano) breathing together to cohere in what would otherwise be called a rhythm section. The ensemble is expanded by more breath – horns and voices. Tumi Pheko (cornet), Garth Erasmus (alto saxophone), Jed Petersen (tenor saxophone), Tina Mene (vocals), Athi Ngcaba (trombone) and Fred Moten (words) collectively explore and deconstruct the conceptual, tonal and atonal possibilities of themes which are at once of old and new dreams – curious and instantiative, melancholic andemergent.
This is a theme present not just throughout Constitution, but in all of Gamedzes work. The ensemble experience of study and struggle is the basis of my thought and everything I try to do in this mad world, he says in the albums liner notes. Further situating the sound and the impulse of the ensemble within the multitudinous terrains of the historical and ongoing struggles of the dispossessed, he explains that The Black Lungs is inspired by the revolutionary thought and practice of the Black Consciousness Movement. In particular, the relationship between antagonism constituting a united front of all the oppressed against white supremacy and racial capitalism and the possibilities for resistance and elaboration – the creative militant capacities of those assembled enabled and unleashed by that process of constitution. (via Label)
Label: International Anthem Recording Company
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: Worldwide
Released: 2024
Genre: Electronic, Jazz, Funk / Soul
Style: Contemporary Jazz, Free Improvisation
File under: International Anthem Recording Company
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