Asher Gamedze
Turbulence & Pulse
Vinyl
Genre: Soul
EAN: 0789993992638
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€28,00
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Cape Town, South Africa-based drummer Asher Gamedze explores the temporal relationships between music and history on his new album Turbulence and Pulse.
Gamedze's critically acclaimed debut album Dialectic Soul was released at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in July 2020. Around the release of this album, he and his friend and writer Teju Adeleye organized a joint online discussion "Poesis" with historian Robin D.G. Kelley and others. One of the notable comments in that session came from poet and scholar Fred Moten, who described Gamedze's drumming as an "astonishing interplay between turbulence and pulse". The pulse is supposed to regulate and also be regular, but the turbulence below and above it is simply extraordinary". Moten added that this concept is a fundamental element of the percussive approach in Black music more broadly.
Turbulence and Pulse takes its title from this moment of synchronicity. Inspired by this description, Gamedze developed the metaphor further, expanding the concept of Turbulence and Pulse through the lens of history. "Time in music is a metaphor for thinking about time in history and how time moves," he says. "The way we are taught history generally robs people of the opportunity to imagine themselves as part of history and its unfolding. It is something that happens to us. I think this is a productive metaphor, because the sense of time in music is created by the interaction of musicians. If we use this metaphor to think about history and time in history, we can see that history is actually created by people in very different ways. Basically, the historical movement is created by people organizing and acting together, whether for progressive or reactionary purposes.
For Gamedze, the fundamental message of Turbulence and Pulse is "to claim a form of historical agency and to recognize that the future is not a foregone conclusion. As humans, we can organize to change our world in small and large ways." This concept is the result of Gamedze's involvement in radical cultural work and political organizing. He adds: "One of the ideas I've had for a long time is to shake up the way people think about culture as something static or fixed. Because of the way colonizers constructed their ideas of African culture, there's this tension in Africa where people talk about the need to preserve and document culture. I think that's important, but you also have to understand that these things are in flux. And we are the people who need to participate in that movement.
Gamedze's critically acclaimed debut album Dialectic Soul was released at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in July 2020. Around the release of this album, he and his friend and writer Teju Adeleye organized a joint online discussion "Poesis" with historian Robin D.G. Kelley and others. One of the notable comments in that session came from poet and scholar Fred Moten, who described Gamedze's drumming as an "astonishing interplay between turbulence and pulse". The pulse is supposed to regulate and also be regular, but the turbulence below and above it is simply extraordinary". Moten added that this concept is a fundamental element of the percussive approach in Black music more broadly.
Turbulence and Pulse takes its title from this moment of synchronicity. Inspired by this description, Gamedze developed the metaphor further, expanding the concept of Turbulence and Pulse through the lens of history. "Time in music is a metaphor for thinking about time in history and how time moves," he says. "The way we are taught history generally robs people of the opportunity to imagine themselves as part of history and its unfolding. It is something that happens to us. I think this is a productive metaphor, because the sense of time in music is created by the interaction of musicians. If we use this metaphor to think about history and time in history, we can see that history is actually created by people in very different ways. Basically, the historical movement is created by people organizing and acting together, whether for progressive or reactionary purposes.
For Gamedze, the fundamental message of Turbulence and Pulse is "to claim a form of historical agency and to recognize that the future is not a foregone conclusion. As humans, we can organize to change our world in small and large ways." This concept is the result of Gamedze's involvement in radical cultural work and political organizing. He adds: "One of the ideas I've had for a long time is to shake up the way people think about culture as something static or fixed. Because of the way colonizers constructed their ideas of African culture, there's this tension in Africa where people talk about the need to preserve and document culture. I think that's important, but you also have to understand that these things are in flux. And we are the people who need to participate in that movement.
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