Asher Gamedze is a South African drummer, composer, and bandleader. Jazz is the genre that most directly claims him under its umbrella (even if he may disagree with that classification). His debut album,
Dialectic Soul, and his work with
Angel Bat Dawid & Tha Brothahood, place him firmly in the hard bop lineage of the '50s and early '60s, as well as a descendent of the jazz vanguard bloodline of South African jazz heroes the
Blue Notes and the American vanguard of
John Coltrane,
Ornette Coleman, and others. The album title comes from poet and scholar
Fred Moten, who described
Gamedze's drumming in the internet forum Poesis as an "amazing interplay between turbulence and pulse. Pulse is supposed to regulate and also be regular, but the turbulence underneath it and on top of it, it's just extraordinary." He also noted that the tenet is a fundamental rhythmic element in Black music.
Gamedze is joined on
Turbulence and Pulse by his
Dialectic Soul quintet -- veteran tenor saxophonist
Buddy Wells, trumpeter
Robin Fassie, and bassist
Thembinkosi Mavimbela. He produced the set and recorded it in Cape Town in May 2021. Chicago-based vocalist
Julian "Deacon" Otis also assists. The title-track opener commences with a reverbed piano, a shuffling, circular drum pattern, the sound of wind, and a vocal chant that frames the artist's creative manifesto regarding time and space in the making of music. "Wynter Time" is a nine-minute modal blues dedicated to Black Caribbean radical intellectual
Sylvia Wynter, author of the book Black Metamorphosis.
Gamedze sets the dancing pace, rolling his snares, tom-toms, and cymbals as the frontline horns languidly explore the lyric with processional discipline.
Wells' tenor solo takes time to develop as it punctuates blues and post-bop atop the circular rhythmic progression. "If It Rains. To Pursue the Truth." is introduced by the drummer and
Fassie. The latter offers a mournful, minor-key lyric adorned by
Mavimbela's punctuation of each roll, accent, and fill from
Gamedze, with
Wells arriving in the second half to underscore the trumpeter's lines on tenor. "Alibama," composed jointly by
Fassie and
Gamedze, recalls the joyous, resistance-fueled township jazz of the '70s with a long, winding, lullaby-like melody driven by a triple-timed bassline and frenetic bop drumming. One can hear both
Abdullah Ibrahim and
Hugh Masekela in the lyric. The bass-fueled abstraction in "Out Stepped Zim," frames a hypnotic melody that sounds influenced by
Coleman's "Lonely Woman."
Wells' solo goes head to head with the rhythm section as they extend the entire concept of rhythmic and harmonic interplay. Closer "Underground Formation" is a direct nod to Chicago, his adoptive American city, and he threads in tonal, modal, and rhythmic notions informed by the influence of the
Art Ensemble of Chicago. Taken whole,
Turbulence and Pulse is at once remarkably adventurous and profoundly accessible. Special editions of the album are appended with three tracks from a show in Cairo, Egypt with a completely different ensemble. ~ Thom Jurek
