For a European self-taught student of African Music, teaming up with a South African magical realist songwriter (and vice versa) has been a dream come true. Since 2017 Cape Town’s Gugulethu Duma has found a perfect foil within Algerian-German producer Kerim Melik Becker, and together, through an arsenal of modern performance tools and traditional African instruments, they’ve been creating “nomadic future folk” as dumama + kechou.
dumama’s experiences of peripatetic youth complement Berlin-raised kechou’s newfound time in Cape Town, sharing a dream of de-colonialism, continental unity, and cross-cultural meditation through sonic exploration. That definitely checks out for their upcoming debut collaborative album, buffering juju, out March 20th, featuring a handful of awesome guest appearances and providing a safe haven for indigenous sounds in the modern digital era. buffering juju is best experienced as a whole, but before you strike up the stereo for this eight-song suite, get into the groove with “intaka”!
–Photo: Tseliso Monaheng