South Africa is known for its strong celestial folk tradition, alternative sound, and performance practice, so who are some of the people at the forefront of this space? Artist, performer, and sonic researcher Gugulethu Duma’s name sits comfortably on that list. Mostly known as Dumama, she is one of the most exciting artists who is centring indigenous knowledge and heritage in her compositional and performance style while developing a style that spans cities, continents and genres. She is also part of the duo Dumama + Kechou who released an album titled Buffering Juju in 2020, hailed as triumphant nomadic future folk.

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Many people associate you with uHadi (Southern African bow instrument). Seeing our indigenous instruments performed across different music styles has been such a wonderful thing to witness. Why did you choose uHadi as your instrument of expression?

I didn’t choose uHadi as my instrument of expression. I was interested in exploring it, and it just became a publicised exploration. I think my instrument of expression is my voice and my body as a conduit, and I also play guitar, but I just don’t publicise it as a spectacle — it’s like a compositional companion. I also play keys and synths, so uHadi is special because of the conversations around heritage and preservation, and I think that is important to visualise it. The questions now are about visibility and intentionality, and what visibility does for the culture and for the cultural bearers. [These are] the tension[s] that I am still processing.

What motivates you to make music?

It’s this release of dopamine that happens when I unfold the voice and the many different selves that I get to honour and explore because a lot of my composing happens in performance. I really need to stand inside the sonics and have them move through me for me to know what the message is. It is always helpful to have other energy around, not just for affirmations. It’s really about resonance and relating because I feel like people’s subconscious states and people’s breath and vulnerability when they are surrounded by music are just felt and present. 

I read a piece in the Los Angeles Times with American alto saxophonist Pharoah Sanders the other day. He made an interesting point about his listening practice, saying, “I listen to myself so that I know what I need to work on, and I let that be my guide.” There is always this expectation that musicians listen to other music to create, are you inspired by other music or do your sources of inspiration lay outside?

I am very inspired by other music and many different genres, like techno. I love house, electronic music, and sound noise (noise music). I love jazz, soul, and spiritual. I love gospel. I love hip-hop. And I love dancing and twerking. And a lot comes from that – that generates sound for me. I am inspired by my dreams and the dreamscapes that others share with me. I have a rich dream world, and I have a dream-sharing ritual with my loved ones. I am inspired by historical and contemporary encounters, books, poems, films, photographs and conversations. 

What kind of energy do you look for in performances and in your collaborations?

I am looking for reciprocal tenderness, curiosity, and respect. Also, it's important for me to be able to dance with the people that I am making music with. I like to play games when we get together. I like to play this word association game, which is sort of like, let’s give language to the vibe of the day and the room and the vibe of our exchanges today, and then we get into narrative-making exercise. In our recent gig at Badehaus, I split the set-up into elements where I said there was blood, earth, wind, water, and fire. And so, we would be in this transient liminality, really just trying to connect with ourselves and one another without thinking too much about it. And when I would throw one of these words, we would have to embody the element that I was chanting, and then we would go into narrative-exploring. If a musician is too rigid and attached to traditional formats of composing and putting together a set, I am usually repelled by that.

Your sound – is it nomadic future folk or is it Afrofuturism?

​​I am really enjoying the idea of being a nuanced artist. I think in nomadic future folk – there is something there about not belonging anywhere. Nomadism doesn’t belong to a geopolitical location. Nomadic cultures have inspired us, not only in the music that comes out of this constant state of migration and the fusions that emerge - but in the faith from wandering into unknown territories, following natural forces, or intuitive guidance. In terms of the music that I make, it is genre-bending, informed by all the different compositional systems. I think it’s informed by the South African oral culture for sure I am quite a conversational person. I don’t know if my sound is nomadic future folk or if it's Afrofuturism. I think that what Karim and I made in Buffering Juju is nomadic because it is all of these geographies coming together, and we are also people who have been on the move in our lives as musicians, and the future gives us hope, right? 

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I think that there are limitations to Afrofuturism in the African context because we are not dealing with the same particularities of oppression as the diaspora.

I think Afrofuturism is a tricky one. I think it’s gone through an intense commodification that makes it feel a little bit unrelatable. When I look at the pop-cultural performance of it, I think the ideas of critical, imaginative resistance definitely resonate with my practice and the idea of feeling omnipresent, feeling like there is a familiarity in a future where I have completely lived out a narrative, a fantasy – so imagining a way out of despair. I think Afrofuturism is beautiful for us to rewrite ourselves with delicate care and awareness, and to time travel. Thinking of John Akomfrah’s [documentary-film] The Last Angel of History and this idea that the western world might have the clocks, we have the time and we have the key to time is something that I think Afrofuturism in its pop-culture performance doesn’t go in-depth about. I don’t resonate [sic] with the commodification of Afrofuturism, but I respect the framework and feel that it is a part of me. I think my sound encompasses many different worlds, and it's sounding more and more like the noise of the heart, and that’s where I am at.

What do you listen to these days?

I am trying to listen to my thoughts a lot because usually, I notice them, and I'm so quick to document them, but I'm really trying to listen to what my thoughts are trying to tell me. I am also listening to a lot of Esperanza Spalding, like across the board – every album is different, and I really enjoy how she's unfolding her scores. I am listening to this producer from Chicago, Jana Rush. Her album Painful Enlightenment is so gritty, so raw and uncomfortable. I am listening to Nala Sinephro. I am reading her album Space 1.8. There is this album by h hunt called Playing Piano for Dad [that] I am really enjoying that too. There is [sic] Floating Points and Pharaoh Sanders' Promises. And there is a Haitian guitarist France Casseus; he's got this album called Haitian Dances where he's just playing the guitar. I think it was released in 1954. It is really just tender, holding and calming.

Sometimes creating can feel so natural to living because, to some extent, humans are historical beings, active in making the past, present and future in the everyday process of living. I like to think of it as an unavoidable fact of being in the world. So even the act of creating, sonically, can feel like something that someone cannot help but do. Can you relate to this addiction?

It is like a solid addiction! It's like, 'how can I stop conceptualising everything that happens in my life?'; I think that's the songwriter's bug. But I always like to look at that feeling and that experience. My imagination sensationalises it into a groove, melody and feeling that needs to be sonically processed into this shareable thing, and not necessarily publicly shareable, but a sharable thing that I can listen back to. It is an addiction.

It’s been over two years of this pandemic nightmare and lockdowns. How did this affect you as a musician and performance artist?

It affected me significantly – it was really sad because we had released Buffering Juju, and we were so ready to tour this album. It was this tragic year of not being able to evolve as musicians because performing does that for me, and the heart expands in the ritual of gathering with people.

You recently had your first performance for the year, “Shades of Oshu” at Badehaus in Berlin. How was it?

It just was just so revitalising and wonderful to be on stage with these Hungarian homies who I actually met in the week of the gig. It was super inspiring, and listening back to some of those compositions that have emerged from my personal practice and trying out some of these lyrics in the context of a band and a room full of people. Seeing how those ideas land and those textures land was really special, and I am looking forward to more stage performances this year.

What has it been like being a Black woman performing artist in Europe?

Different spaces come with different levels of frustration. Ultimately, it depends on the consciousness of the curators, organisers and the band because, for me, my performance practice ritualises modes of togetherness. But [it’s] also processing of ancestral technology and embodied memory. If a space is commodifying that from a ‘let’s Blackface our PR for decolonial content’, that makes me feel like I am pimping out my sacred practice for a space that doesn’t have my best interest at heart. So, there is always that institutional tension of performing heritage or performing rituals, and I definitely try to choose my spaces and collaborators carefully. At the same time, that is a huge privilege because sometimes you need to go to work and pay your bills, and you need to balance the books. There is that political tension and awareness of positionality.

You are also there for your studies, right? What interests you about your MA studies project?

My master’s programme is in Dance, Knowledge, Heritage and Practice, where we look at the dance and music relationship. I went into heritage studies, dance analysis, and what informs the steps, and I’m looking into transmission, preservation and physicalising fantasy. My master’s project was “ancestral body noise”: essentially, looking at how we unpack our aesthetic approaches to improvisation and composition and the idea of performance and non-performance of ancestry and heritage. 

I really love the way you place the word ‘heritage’ for some reason. It doesn't have that awkward feeling when we, as Black people, try to put our histories into palatable consumable forms. In most cases, the awkwardness comes from a feeling of dignity lacking, you know? What does the future look like for folk music?

Shit girl, I don’t know! What? I think folk music would be of more value if it could disrobe from the rigid garments and the projected expectations from people who are not the tellers of the story. I can’t say what it looks like, but I can say what liberated folk music could look like – it would just be abantu (people) honouring their experiences rather than this aesthetic performance of what folk used to do. 

What can we expect to hear from you this year?

Girl! Don’t expect nothing. Just accept whatever comes, as – she’s just learning from her life and just sharing, it’s not to expect but to accept.