dumama + kechou

dumama + kechou play “nomadic future folk music,” is a self-assigned genre that only hints at the multitudes contained in the duo’s (Gugulethu Duma (AKA dumama) and Algerian-German Kerim Melik Becker (kechou) musical collaboration. Rooted in the past but striving for the future, at home with its wandering nature, their sound draws from instrumental, percussive and vocal traditions that stretch across Northern and Southern Africa and infuses them with digital effects and thoroughly contemporary songwriting. Although it’s not music that lends itself to background listening,  it’s not difficult or otherwise off-putting, even with its eclectic musical influences. Dumama is a warm and generous vocalist, welcoming audiences into her multilayered harmonies, and the arrangements from multi-instrumentalist kechou may be adventurous but they’re never alienating. It’s just that there’s a gravity to the sound that’s inescapable — even if you’re just trying to dance to the undeniable grooves, you’ll find yourself spiraling deeper into the songs’ looping structures. There’s no such thing as a casual listen here.

Modern and timeless, cerebral and inviting, hand-made and digitally processed, dumama + kechou refuse to fall into the trap of easy categorization. Instead, they’re living in the spaces in-between, embracing the friction that comes when contradictory impulses collide, and fanning those sparks into flames of creativity.