Perspectives: Asher Gamedze + Another Time Ensemble
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2020 at 1pm EST
Vimeo
For this performance, from a rooftop in historic Cairo, Asher Gamedze and Another Time Ensemble will meditate and speculate on the possibility and necessity of another time. The performance will be followed by a discussion with Asher Gamedze.
Even in a city constructed by and between numerous timelines – the pharaonic period, the conquest of Alexander, the Arab invasion and the spread of Islam, later the Ottoman Empire and more recently the Nationalist period of the 20th century – the morass of the current moment makes the present seem inescapable. In many ways, this tyranny of the present is a global condition, part of the attack on the historical imagination produced by neoliberalism. Understanding both music and historical time as multiple, the ensemble hopes to give sound to the idea that another time is possible. The ensemble, constituted by some of Cairo’s finest improvisers, will meander through some of Gamedze’s compositions and perhaps some poems from other times, weaving a soundscape with that of the city’s as part of the movement toward other times.
Image credits: Cairo skyline, courtesy of the artist. | Asher Gamedze in Cape Town, photo: David Harrison | dialectic soul by Asher Gamedze, a film by Sisonke Papu.
