Tumi Mogorosi Group Theory: Black Music Import LP

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 outer-national dimension, taking the drummer's chair in both Shabaka Hutchings' Shabaka and the Ancestors formation and with avant-garde noiseniks The Wretched, who featured on Brownswood's acclaimed South African showcase, Indaba Is.

Group Theory: Black Music moves an established format dramatically forward with the addition of a nine-person choir. 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 (1962), Andrew Hill's Lift Every Voice (1970), Billy Harper's Capra Black (1973), and Donald Byrd's I'm Trying to Get Home (1965).

Features a cross-generational lineup of celebrated South African musicians including guitarist Reza Khota, pianist Andile Yenana, and vocalists Gabi Motuba and Siyabonga Mthembu. Also features Lesego Rampolokeng. For fans of: Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim), Shabaka Hutchings, John Coltrane, Max Roach, Donald Byrd, Abbey Lincoln, Art Blakey.

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.