Tumi Mogorosi - Group Theory: Black Music (Mushroom Hour Half Hour 2022)

Just in: another big modern jazz store favorite. Here’s what I wrote about it for Rush Hour when it first came out:

“South African drummer and composer Tumi Mogorosi delivers one of 2022’s strongest jazz albums in the form of the hauntingly beautiful ‘Group Theory: Black Music’ on the impeccable Mushroom Hour Half Hour imprint, chasing the ghosts of Albert Ayler, Max Roach and Rahsaan Roland Kirk with the help of an allstar cast and a nine-piece choir. 

Providing a dense wall of sound the size of a modest cathedral, the choir singing contrasts wonderfully with Mogorosi’s light and subtle drumming, Reza Khota’s understated guitar playing and Mthunzi Mvubu’s stunning harmonic sax work.

“(New) Black Music is this: Find the self, then kill it”, American poet and music critic Amiri Baraka wrote in the liner notes of the 1965 Impulse live album ‘The New Wave in Jazz’, that features spirited performances by John Coltrane, Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp, a motto that is featured prominently on ‘Group Theory’s inner sleeve. 

It’s this striving for selflessness that makes this album such a rewarding listening experience, from the whirlwind first notes of opener ‘Wadada’ to the dying seconds of Mogorosi’s interpretation of the standard ‘Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child’. The ego is replaced by something bigger here - the communal spirit of making music together that takes both the musicians and the listeners to a higher plane, providing they look past the bombast and surrender to its awesome power.”