At the release of the Vuma Levin Quintet’s acclaimed CD The Spectacle of An-Other in 2015, Sihle Mthembu had this to say in The Mail & Guardian: “Vuma Levin is destined to be one of South African jazz’s greatest musicians.”
I agree. My assessment is manifold. An extraordinarily humble musician, Vuma Levin understands that jazz performance is never exclusively about the bandleader or the soloist. It is a community gathered in aesthetic celebration of freedom—or at least its aspiration. He thus performs with his fellow musicians with a commitment to bringing the music to the fore.
This stepping back is, however, marked by a simultaneous element of stepping forward with great musical skill. His accolades, after all, include multiple awards as a guitarist during his years as a student and many more over the past half-decade of his still early career. This led to his performing with top jazz musicians across Africa and Europe ranging from Herbie Tsoeli in South Africa to Benjamin Herman in the Netherlands.
In addition to the joy of listening to Spectacle many times, I had the good fortune of experiencing the quintet live at The Orbit in Johannesburg, South Africa. The performance was a captivating set of compositions across meters, modalities, and jazz styles. It was nothing short of magical.
The ascription of excellent musicianship extends as well to the lineup of accompanying musicians: Xavi Torres Vincente on piano, Bernard van Rossum on saxophones, Jeoroen Batterink on drums, Marco Zenini on bass, and Cara Stacey on varieties of indigenous instruments. Despite the fluidity of rhythm and subtlety of notes, these are not easy compositions to play. To be at home in music that shifts meters and keys at times across a single track requires devoting enormous energy to one’s craft. It is to achieve a singularity of performance among a group of musicians in which the distinction between pre-reflection and reflection disappears.
I was asked in a 2019 interview for The Los Angeles Times about artists whose work exemplify a form of decolonial aesthetics. My response was that I only see decolonial questions as critical moments in certain forms of art but not necessarily the foci on which art must be based. Art should not be one thing but instead a meeting or convergence of many elements through which we live our relationships with reality. Art is, in other words, about freedom and belonging without dissociation from the challenges of life in the face of the lifeless.
I listed Vuma Levin as an artist with this insight. Spectacle revealed that Levin is among the best artists exploring decolonial themes in music. His 2020 album, Antique Spoons, reminds us that art must also pay attention to the everyday, in which each moment’s offering is a testament against despair and nihilism. In this case, music reminds us of those moments of taking in the familiar amid uncaring and anonymous spaces.
Listen to track 6, “Airport Terminal.” A place in which touring musicians habituate themselves to movement without reflection, there are those chance encounters of reminding them of their humanity, whether in a conversation or an object on display in a shop. Although there are people who have never visited an airport or flown on a plane, others for whom such places have become mundane often fail to realize their wonder. Levin articulates that.
Track 1, “The End, Alight by Magic Lantern,” is a musical allegory of ascent with the paradox of an end that is a beginning. It is a testament to all memory, where the end of an event marks the beginning of its memory. A pattern in eleven meter introduces Track 2, “Antique Spoon,” the album’s namesake. The underlying chords, marked by sharp ninths and elevenths offer the familiar resonance of the metallic “ting” of the composition’s namesake. This is followed by the carnivalesque “Palmoteo,” announced in rousing beats of seven. A celebration of life, it is also the joy of love. What is love, after all, but the wish to continue even into the unknown and unpredictable? Track 4, “Giants in the Park,” takes advantage of the lower register to signal the large, the gigantic. The distance between lows and highs offers space, and, one could imagine, such offers room for reflection. This is a colorful piece, with the effect of petals falling from above. Despite moments of appearing ominous, the giant, it turns out, is gentle and kind. Calling forth reflection takes us, through the kalimba (sometimes called African thumb piano), African xylophone, and other African instruments into acts of free variation.
In effect, listen through movements from bed to kitchen to outdoors—perhaps holding hands with others—into realms of increased space and possibility. Outside is sometimes welcoming; other times foreboding; at all times, it waits. Sometimes it is important to revise one’s plans before setting forth to, as we already realized from Track 6, places of journey. Track 7, “Promenade,” as the title suggests, takes us for a walk. Yet it does so through at first beats of five—unusual for bipedal creatures—with reprieves in four and cut time. As with the first part, which is punctuated by a moment of reflection, Track 8 offers, in musical onomatopoeia, “Maybe.” As with the end that marked the beginning, there is recurrence. The sound of the antennae and legs of a cockroach, reaching in many directions, comes to an intersection on the closing track. The mythic significance of crossroads need not be rehearsed here. The insect, often crushed when seen, is always searching, exploring, through resources of an almost two-dimensional existence. Lines intersect. Facing them, we wonder, should we go?
Bravos, Vuma Levin et al, bravos!
Lewis Gordon
Lewis R. Gordon is Chairperson of the Awards Committee of the Caribbean Philosophical Association and Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Global Affairs and Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. He is also Honorary President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies and Distinguished Scholar at The Most Honourable PJ Patterson Centre for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy at The University of the West Indies, Mona. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (Routledge, 2021); Fear of Black Consciousness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the USA, and Penguin-UK 2022); Black Existentialism and Decolonizing Knowledge: Writings of Lewis R. Gordon, edited by Rozena Maart and Sayan Dey (Bloomsbury, 2023); and “Not Bad for an N—, No?”/ «Pas mal pour un N—, n'est-ce pas? » (Daraja Press, 2023).
