On his second outing as frontman since 2014’s Project ELO, South African drummer, composer, and theorist Tumi Mogorosi exudes the rich dynamism of contemporary South African jazz. Referencing sonic standards, the mathematical and literary, Group Theory: Black Music is steeped in the improvisatory traditions of Black music while seeking innovative forms of musical coexistence alongside a nine-piece choir conducted by Themba Maseko.
“The idea of group theory is something I take from American poet and scholar Amiri Baraka,” Mogorosi tells Apple Music. “He speaks about how new Black music is ‘find the self and kill it.’ This idea has many resonances with the idea of the group, as in order for the group to thrive, there should be some kind of death of the individual. This is what I was trying to go for with this album; even within the construct of the music, the melody is contested between the horns and the voices.”
Forming a cross-generational quintet alongside guitarist Reza Khota, bassist Dalisu Ndlazi, altoist Mthunzi Mvubu, and trumpeter Tumi Pheko, Mogorosi dramatically muses on notions of Blackness, community, and cultural identity. With further contributions by pianist Andile Yenana, poet Lesego Rampolokeng, and vocalists Gabi Motuba and Siya Mthembu, Group Theory drives home its ethos of communal articulation, poetically illustrated by Andrew Tshabangu’s cover photograph. “That image speaks to the idea of what it means to exist within a group setting,” Mogorosi shares. “All of their feet are in rhythm, but one foot is elevated. That represents Blackness’ suspension within the group construction. That the whole group itself has that moment of historical suspension or deceptive resolution means certain new knowledges can still be found.” Here, Mogorosi talks us through his album, track by track.
“Wadada”
“This whole album is trying to bear witness to the things that have unfolded within the personal, but also within the political. I’m also trying to find a tie between the two. Bra Bheki Peterson was a really important figure for young artists and scholars. We lost a mentor and someone who had so much integrity for the work we’re doing. He was the kind of person to hold space for radical thought that makes both the academy and whiteness uncomfortable. This is just bearing witness to all the great things he did for us—the cultural work of bringing forth new knowledge systems that can, hopefully, liberate everyone. We had to open with this.”
“The Fall”
“‘The Fall’ comes from a conceptualization I deal with in my book DeAesthetic. I’m referencing the scholar Brent Hayes Edwards who, in Epistrophies, wrote, ‘Scat begins with a fall.’ With that, he speaks to the moment when Louis Armstrong had written lyrics in a recording space. When the recording began, that piece of paper literally fell to the floor, and he couldn’t get to it, so he had to improvise—the scat started there. I take that formulation and I marry it with David Marriott’s, who speaks about Blackness as a perpetual fall—the fall with no ground. When you start to think about these two phrases, you can also bring in the biblical: the fall out of Eden, fall out of grace, or the fall into flesh. The fall into flesh could be seen as how, historically, Black people have been used. The primary thing that has been extracted from Black people is the Black body.”
“Panic Manic”
“As much as this song is trying to attest to moments it’s unable to, it’s also trying to sit with the neurotic episode of trying to make sense of something that doesn’t make any. I think that’s why the psychological is so important for me: it’s the precondition of all these things that we act out, which are symptoms of deeper problems.”
“3.15 (Where It’s Darkest)” (feat. Andile Yenana)
“This was maybe a bit of a personal thing—not anymore, but in the past, I’ve been somewhat of an insomniac. I would find that, around this time, I’d have the most challenging thoughts. In those moments, I’d have thoughts about myself. ‘Is one gonna make it in the race of life?’ I would be thinking about future possibilities and being a young Black man from a particular region. It was paranoia about existence, and some of these thoughts were terrifying to say the least. Speaking of the collective unconscious, these are all things that were collective but had a very strong presence in my singularity and particular situation.”
“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” (feat. Andile Yenana & Siya Mthembu)
“I can say, ‘Sometimes I feel like a motherless child’ and, unfortunately, that kind of dislocation is something that has been experienced by certain people. They have an intimate relationship with being dispossessed and being uncertain of the future. Someone who has, for any reason, actually lost their mother could have something else to add on, more than the psychological I’m holding onto here.”
“Walk With Me”
“‘Walk With Me’ is one of those songs that is an invitation for people to bear witness to not only mine but our existence. Walking around the streets of Joburg, every corner you get someone begging, and on every corner that someone always looks like you. It’s even worse that they look like your daughter, son, father, or grandmother. If we walk together and open our eyes to what’s happening in our communities, then I think we can firstly acknowledge that there’s a problem and move from there.”
“At the Limit of the Speakable”
“There’s a way that trying to reach back and create new forms for the future is finding a limit within this current construct. Beyond that limit is a feeling and, like Bob Marley says, ‘He who feels it knows it.’ I think that’s also a critique this album is trying to pose. This music can only be this music within the sense of community. The music has so many ideas that go beyond what I can encapsulate in thoughts and words. There are certain things that we have an incapacity to put into words, particularly about the shared Black experience.”
“Mmama”
“My grandmother was a badass and didn’t take shit. So Mmama is her actual name, hence the double ‘m.’ There’s a story she used to tell me from the time she was working in the days of apartheid. She was working as a [cashier] or something, and this one time she had a headache. She went to ask the supervisor, ‘Can I take a Grand-Pa [headache tablet] and pay for it when I leave?’ Apparently, he’d said no, but being who she is, she took it anyway. Given the times this was happening in, there was a big altercation in the store, and she quit on the spot. She always told me it doesn’t matter what the so-called consequences are going to be—you don’t have to take rubbish.”
“Thaba Bosiu” (feat. Andile Yenana)
“‘Thaba Bosiu’ is a moment that we can point to there being a third hand. It’s the notion of the tribal war, but the war itself is precipitated by the colonial encounter. We’re holding on to this divide-and-conquer sentiment through an identity politic that is being driven by a colonial understanding. The divide of Africa into different colonies can be articulated by that moment in ‘Thaba Bosiu’ where brother is fighting brother as part of the Mfecane wars. However you want to articulate your identity, it’s always preconditioned by fighting for property taken by the colonial settlement itself. With the cultural pride we have, we’re kind of re-enacting these violences. I’m trying to use what people might use as a celebratory monument to talk about the difficulties of how we came to be here.”
“Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” (feat. Gabi Motuba)
“I wanted to highlight the incapacity for gender to play specific roles in the sense of Black dispossession—we all feel this sense of dispossession through the same violent articulation. Of course, there are certain things that happen that are highly gendered, but that violence is presupposed by a genderless position. The symptoms of this take on particular formations as a result of feeling vulnerable and alienated. We all articulate our dispossession differently, but our relationality itself is built on violence, hence we can be that way towards each other.”
“Where Are the Keys?” (feat. Andile Yenana & Lesego Rampolokeng)
“Bra Lesego is an important figure in the tradition of Black consciousness, and as he always says, ‘Poetry itself refuses to be understood.’ We’re in a double conundrum where we’re dealing with art forms that refuse meaning, and language is also incapable of articulating any. This is devastating but also reassuring that there’s still so much work to be done. From a revolutionary point of view, it means we haven’t found the keys and they are still out there. So, this is a meditation on all this violence we have accumulated over the years—what are the ways for us to sit with it and for us to not let it reproduce in our families? We need to find a way to exorcise the violence from our psyches because the only place we have to ‘dump’ it is on the people closest to us.”