dumama + kechou

buffering juju, the title of dumama + kechou’s debut album, relates to the process of “excavating spiritually charged content from within”. The duo’s textural sound, driven by cyclical song structures and chant making, not only captures the angst of the modern world but mines this state of affairs for regenerative potential.

The initial clutch of shows that etched the dumama + kechou sound blew open vast sonic and conceptual possibilities. “I guess we were in similar places with our music processes in trying to push healing music to the edges and be more experimental with it,” says dumama. The result is that buffering juju plays out as a lush narrative meeting its sonic equivalent; one whose world is self-contained and interwoven. The narrative unravels as a piece of magical realism informed by South African folklore and reality, detailing a woman’s liberation story where the characters shift shape and traverse multiple realms, deploying various iterations of their power or lack thereof. “It has an organic, natural, cyber and modern kind of energy - all rooted in African aesthetics of sound and storytelling,” says kechou.

Recorded primarily in Cape Town and Johannesburg over the first quarter of 2019, buffering juju is a conduit to a past we were not necessarily present for, and a future where threatened indigenous technologies thrive in an increasingly digitised world.