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LP
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TAL 031LP
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Garth Erasmus is an artist and musician based in Cape Town, South Africa. Threnody for the KhoiSan is his first album under his own name. Since 1985 his artistic interests have broadened to include music-making, designing and making his own instruments based on indigenous KhoiSan knowledge. From 1999 to 2012 he was a member of the South African First Nation activist group Khoi Khonnexion. In the past couple of years Garth Erasmus has also been a pivotal part of various international performance pieces and exhibition projects which brought him regularly to Europe. Most of these activities were developed and performed in collaboration with the Hamburg based band Kante and his band Khoi Khonnexion. His works in music are predominantly characterized by a restless quest for alternative forms of expression and materials including self-build instruments, field recordings or various electronic music devices. In this context the music on Threnody for the KhoiSan takes on a primal and metaphorical meaning. Rather than a formal, physical initiation, this process is more spiritually inclined, yet it is a spirituality which is consistently put into action. All instruments which appear on Threnody for the KhoiSan are products of a process of discovery starting from square one. All this is based and founded on the beauty of simplicity and minimalism as symbolized by the single string Khoisan musical bow and arrow as trance musical instrument. In this sense it soon became manifest for Garth Erasmus to combine the bow instruments with various electronic instruments. Besides developing his own unique language in music, he also shared an expressed interested in experimental sound aesthetics, avantgarde composition and free jazz. However, his non-academic approach towards sound and music was always fueled by the desire for a reconnection to the land and to the indigenous knowledge of the KhoiSan, whose struggle for First Nation status continues.
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