Constitution Asher Gamedze

• 1 Find Each Other 03:47
• 2 Determining Facts 16:34
• 3 Antagonism 01:31
• 4 Elaboration 03:14
• 5 Constitution 39:22
• 6 Destitution 02:01
• 7 High Land. New Home 04:22
• 8 Melancholia 07:15
• 9 Deposition: A Song for the Dialectician 03:34
• Total Runtime 01:21:40

Info for Constitution

“Members of the dispossessed, won’t 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 Gamedze’s new album Constitution. The expansive double album, a minoritarian fellowship in breath, is Gamedze’s follow-up to 2023’s Turbulence and Pulse (IARC0057/M3H013), and his first with The Black Lungs, a ten-piece ensemble. The album – recorded in one day at Cape Town’s 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 and emergent.

As Moten puts it, “this polyrhythmic but also always polyphonic critical joining – this re-assemblage of ensemble, this loving violation – lets the nightmares of individuation all unravel.” The Black Lungs join a tradition of sound, struggle and thought that is constituted by this very process of unraveling the isolating questions of isolated philosophers: “Is Socrates happy?”; “Does the dialectician have a sound?” On Constitution, the power of the question, the possibility of an improvised answer and the celebration of being together exists not in the solo but in the group, the ensemble.

This is a theme present not just throughout Constitution, but in all of Gamedze’s 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 album’s 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.”

Tumi Pheko, cornet
Garth Erasmus, alto saxophone
Jed Petersen, tenor saxophone
Ru Slayen, percussion
Athi Ngcaba, trombone
Tina Mene, vocals
Fred Moten, words
Nobuhle Ashanti, piano
Sean Sanby, bass
Asher Gamedze, drums

Asher Gamedze
is a cultural worker based in Cape Town, South Africa working mainly as a musician, writer, organizer and an educator. His work as a musician is primarily as a drummer with various ensembles across and between musical traditions of improvised and free music, Pop, Rock, Hip-Hop and Soul. He has performed across Southern Africa, USA and Europe. Some of the artists and ensembles with whom he has played include Xhanti Nokwali, Manny Walters, Nduduzo Makhathini, Angel Bat Dawid and many others. His debut album as a bandleader, Dialectic Soul, (On the Corner Records, July 2020) was released to critical acclaim, achieving #4 on the New York Times "Best Jazz albums of 2020" list, the "Best Traditional Jazz Album" at the Mzantsi Jazz Awards in 2021 amongst many others. As a writer and a researcher, his interests include African history, histories of revolutionary thought and practice, black cultural production, and radical pedagogy. His written work has been published in online popular and news forums, academic journals and independent activist publications. He is part of The Interim which is an autonomous collective in Cape Town for radicalizing cultural work.

This album contains no booklet.