Via Philophon: "Philophon sister label Lokalophon is proud to present 'At The Studio' by The Zonke Family. The new label continues its journey into championing unsung local talent from all over the world.
The LP captures the traditional sound of Marembe people, living in Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
Masters of the sadly rare and endangered mapete mbira tradition (a kind of giant kalimba whose players juggle with up to four independent rhythmic and melodic lines), The Zonke family are more than musicians, they’re cultural bearers of an art that could soon be lost.
When the three musicians of the Zonke Family entered Max Weissenfeldt 's studio, he didn't expect a spontaneous casual recording session to turn into four days (or rather, nights) of intense work and breathtaking music. Up to this moment, he only had heard of some master musicians from Zimbabwe visiting Berlin to play for the first time outside their homeland.
No one in the global music scene had ever heard of the matepe mbira, a kind of giant kalimba whose players juggle with up to four independent rhythmic and melodic lines. Add the sophisticated overtone tuning of its dozens of keys, and already one musician may sound like many. Two matepe or more create intricate musical textures of enormous spectral complexity, the basis of the highly 'kaleidophonic' nature of many traditional pieces: Similar to the famous optical illusion with two faces and a vase, your brain may jump forth and back between hearing entirely different music within the same piece.
This ancient art of tricking the listener's ear and creating a high degree of musical ambiguity - and at the same time inviting collective multi-perspective participation - is on the verge of vanishing. Experts estimate less than ten remaining matepe master musicians in the country, and fundamentalist followers of imported religions denounce the music as witchcraft - not least due to its role in traditional ceremonies where the musician's job is to induce trance states for communication with their ancestral spirits.
Matepe music's magic entirely lies in its patterns: The musicians hardly add any expressivity to individual notes, which they often play at breakneck pace and full volume. In many regards this strikingly resembles the perspective of a contemporary electronic musician - how can one create interesting music with a step sequencer and loops of 48 steps? Matepe musicians have developed compelling answers to this challenge over many centuries. And if nothing changes, the world is going to lose this knowledge within the current generation.
When the Zonke Family left the studio, Max and his sound engineer Benjamin Spitzmüller had not only recorded more than three hours of marvelous music - they had met premier culture bearers of the traditions of the Marembe people, an ethnic group divided by the border between Zimbabwe and Mozambique. They also had met their traditional leader - Mr. Boyi Nyamande , who is the 17th chief of the Goronga chieftainship, descendent of a family of undisputed kings of precolonial times, chief of about 13.000 people on the Zimbabwean side of the border.
Out September 11 2020
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