Group Theory: Black Music (Mushroom Hour Half Hour)
Tumi Mogorosi
Released July 2022
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2022
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About:
Group Theory:
Black Music is a stunning new statement from South African drummer and composer
Tumi Mogorosi. Standing in the lineage of South African greats such as Louis
Moholo-Moholo, Makaya Ntshoko and Ayanda Sikade, Mogorosi is one of the
foremost drummers working anywhere in the world, with a flexible, powerful
style that brings a distinctive South African inflection to the polyrhythmic tradition
of Elvin Jones, Max Roach and Art Blakey. Since his international debut on
Jazzman Records in 2014 with Project ELO, Mogorosi has been in the vanguard of
the South African creative music scene’s burgeoning outernational dimension,
taking the drummer’s chair in both Shabaka Hutchings’ Shabaka and The Ancestors
formation and with avant-garde noiseniks The Wretched.
As Mogorosi’s first project as leader since 2014, Group Theory: Black Music
marks a return to the drummer’s musical roots. The sound is anchored in the
transnational tradition of Great Black Music, with the core of the group
comprising a quintet of newcomers Tumi Pheko (trumpet) and Dalisu Ndlazi (bass)
alongside the experienced guitarist Reza Khota, with Mogorosi himself and
altoist Mthunzi Mvubu, another Ancestors member, representing the
current generation of South Africa’s creative music torchbearers.
Motivated by Mogorosi’s driving dynamism, the group create deep-hued modal
grooves that burn with a contemporary urgency, while established pianist Andile
Yenana brings an elder voice to three of the tracks. Featured vocalists Gabi
Motuba (Project ELO, The Wretched) and Siyabonga Mthembu (The Brother Moves On)
take differing approaches to the spiritual standard ‘Sometimes I Feel Like a
Motherless Child’, while poet Lesego Rampolokeng pours out lyrical fire on
‘Where Are The Keys?’, creating a bridge back to the Black Consciousness
movement and figures such as Lefifi Tladi and Wally Mongane Serote.
But where Group Theory: Black Music moves an established format dramatically
forward is in the addition of a ten-person choir. Conducted by Themba Maseko,
their massed voices soar powerfully above every track as a collective
instrument of human breath and body, and enter the album into the small but significant
number of radical recordings to have used the voice in this way, such as Max
Roach’s “It’s Time”, Andrew Hill’s “Lift Every Voice”,
Billy Harper’s “Capra Black”, and Donald Byrd’s “I’m Trying To
Get Home”. At the same time, the presence of this wall of voices brings an
inextricable connection to the venerable tradition of South African choral
music, and to the importance that the Black choir has had for South Africa’s
religious, political and social cultures, including the culture of South African
creative music itself. From the Manhattan Brothers and the choral compositions
of Todd Matshikiza to figures such as Johnny Dyani and Victor Ndlazilwane, the
collective power of voice has been one of the cornerstones of improvised
creative music in the country.
‘I started out in a choir’, says Tumi, as he reflects on the significance of
Black voices in concert. ‘There’s this idea of mass, of a group of people
gathering, which has a political implication. And the operatic voice has both a
presence, and a capacity to scream, a capacity for affect. The instrumental
group can sustain the intensity of that affect, and the chorus can go beyond
improvisation, toward communal melodies that everyone can be a part of.’
This potential for communality in the music swings close to Group Theory’s
conceptual centres of gravity. The title refers to the mathematical theory of
the same name, the essentials of which concern the axioms that make a simple
set of items into a true mathematical group – associativity, closure and an
identity element. These mathematical ideas offered Mogorosi a metaphorical
platform for thinking about the way that individual players in a musical unit
are also bound together at the moment of creation, in a unity that begins to
challenge the individual and complicates conventional ideas of leadership and
hierarchy. In bringing experienced musicians such as Yenana and Khota into the
orbit of younger players, Mogorosi also wants to re-orientate the idea of
teacher-student relations toward a more open vision of intergenerational
knowledge sharing. ‘We are looking for questions, not answers’, he says.
Mogorosi’s overarching vision on Group Theory: Black Music is encapsulated by
the touchstone quotation from Amiri Baraka – ‘New Black Music is this: Find the
self, then kill it.’ For Mogorosi, these words speak to an essential feature
and function of Black creative and improvised art – the search for the point
where individual boundaries collapse into the universal ongoing flow of the
music, at the moment of group creation. This flow is not local, it is
transglobal, and it joins the music of the diaspora with Africa, allowing
connections and relations to range across historic and contemporary spaces of
struggle, self-determination and transformation. Such effects are also
transtemporal, dropping deep down into the wells of history to bring forth
sounds from the present and future, and allowing the music to burrow back into
the past. As Baraka’s words imply, the individual cannot escape this search
unchanged, and the creative musician does not desire to: in the time of its
creation, New Black Music intends to flow into and through the performers from
sources beyond them. The writer of a song is never the only author; the soloist
always speaks for others; the leaders are never one but a host of many.
Previous times and places, previous performances and compositions, previous
souls and struggles are always made manifest in the music; the search for the
inner self is also a quest to dissolve the individual into the living soundways
of those who came before and those who will come after. ‘The album is under my
name,’ says Tumi, ‘but the ideas aim at a decentring of the individual composer
or author, and a a decentring of the idea of the “leader” – it tries to encapsulate
the idea of a group effect, to go beyond the point of origin, and it refuses
geo-specific narratives.’
South African creative and improvised music, with its nomadic history of
journeys between the US, Europe and South African, has always been exemplary of
these ongoing processes, and it is fitting that Group Theory: Black Music
should itself be the result of an international collaboration. Starting from a
shared vision and understanding of the parallels between the music being made
in their respective countries, South African label Mushroom Hour Half Hour and
London based label New Soil were able to pool their resources to support Tumi’s
large-scale creative vision for this project and enable it to find the global
audience it seeks and deserves.
Track Listing:
1. Wadada (Tumi Mogorosi) 04:45
2. The Fall (Tumi Mogorosi) 04:55
3. Panic Manic (Tumi Mogorosi) 05:19
4. 3:15 (Where it’s Darkest) (Tumi Mogorosi) featuring Andile Yenana 02:22
5. Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child (Traditional) feat. Andile Yenana & Siya Mthembu 05:02
6. Walk with Me (Tumi Mogorosi) 07:59
7. At the Limit of the Speakable (Tumi Mogorosi) 05:58
8. Mmama (Tumi Mogorosi) 05:51
9. Thaba Bosiu (Tumi Mogorosi) feat. Andile Yenana 05:28
10. Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child (Traditional) feat. Gabi Motuba 05:49
11. Where are the Keys? (Tumi Mogorosi / Lesego Rampolokeng)
feat. Andile Yenana & Lesego Rampolokeng 07:09
Personnel:
Andile Yenana: piano (4, 5, 9, 11)
Dalisu Ndlazi: upright bass
Gabi Motuba: vocals (10)
Lesego Rampolokeng: vocals (11)
Mthunzi Mvubu: alto saxophone
Reza Khota: electric guitar
Siya Mthembu: vocals (5)
Tumi Mogorosi: drums
Tumi Pheko: trumpet
Voices:
Brenda Thulo
Cecilia Phetoe
Charles Shikwambana
Fortunate Jwara
Noluthando Biyana
Sibongile Mollo
Steve Mthombeni
Tebogo Magwe
Themba Maseko (conductor)
Thulisile Ntetha
Recorded December 6th – 7th,
2021, at the Downtown Music Hub, Johannesburg, by Peter Auret & Oyama Songo
Edited & Mixed by Dion Monti
Mastered by Norman Nitzsche at Calyx Mastering
Produced by Andile Yenana & Tumi Mogorosi
A&R by Andrew Curnow & Federico Bolza
Executive Produced by Andrew Curnow, Federico Bolza & Nhlanhla Masondo
Cover Photograph by Andrew Tshabangu
Review:
Veteran South African drummer Tumi Mogorosi had toured and played sessions with his country’s masters before releasing his solo debut, Project Elo, in 2014. Produced by Nduduzo Makhathini, it combined a jazz quintet and vocal quartet in exploring connections between spiritual jazz and post-bop. A current member of Shabaka & the Ancestors, Mogorosi also co-founded the avant-jazz/noise trio Wretched. On Group Theory: Black Music, Mogorosi extends the modernist connections between spiritual jazz and choral gospel music. He carries the torch for a tradition established by Max Roach’s It’s Time (1962), Donald Byrd’s New Perspective (1965), Andrew Hill’s Lift Every Voice (1969), Eddie Gale’s Ghetto Music and Black Rhythm Happening (1968 and 1969), and Billy Harper’s Capra Black (1973) — which all employ choirs. Mogorosi leads a quintet, sextet, and a nine-voice choir with soloists.
“Wadada” commences dramatically as the horn section’s gorgeous modal head frames the wordless choir, which soars above them. Tumi Pheko’s bluesy trumpet solo is followed by a harmonically expansive alto break from Mthunzi Mvubu (also a member of the Ancestors) as Mogorosi fills, accents, and delivers nearly majestic processional patterns before guitarist Reza Khota offers shard-like chords that introduce a group improv section. “Panic Manic” sounds like it begins in the middle. Trumpet, sax, co-producer Andile Yenana’s cascading piano, and Dalisu Ndlazi’s knotty bassline guide Mogorosi’s thrumming drum kit as the vocalists contribute passionate modal lines. Behind Pheko’s solo, Mvubu and Khota engage in intricate interplay. During the saxophonist’s solo, Yenana adds massive chords and crystalline ostinatos before the choir and horns carry it out. There are two versions of the spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” led by vocal soloists. The first features Siya Mthembu fronting the choir and backed by the trio of Yenana, Ndlazi, and Mogorosi. His baritone ranges over the lyric as the choir frames and then elevates his phrasing. After Yenana’s deeply moving solo, Mthembu reenters, singing falsetto in dialogue with the choir. Led by choir and horns, “Walk with Me” evolves from modal jazz to spiritual soul before Mvubu provides a hinge with a killer post-bop blues solo. “Mmama” is an instrumental that reveals the band’s intricate, nearly lyrical interplay. “Thaba Bosiu” showcases the choir moving toward vanguard jazz with syncopated phrasing behind the glorious modal communication of the sextet. The second version of “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” is sung by longtime collaborator Gabi Motuba. Mogorosi’s tom-toms rumble under her deep blue, incantatory intro. When she begins delivering the verse, her singing over the chorale’s backing sounds like it is haunted by history. Motuba alters the lyric, embodying Black experience throughout time’s passage and the distance traveled in the African diaspora: “We’ve come a long way from home…” as Khota, Yenana, and Mogorosi add intuitive support. Group Theory: Black Music is a monumental achievement. Mogorosi’s considerable talent as a bandleader illuminates the depth and diversity of jazz talent on the explosive South African scene.
Thom Jurek (AllMusic)
