Garth Erasmus (voice, bow, alto)
Ruth May (viola, voice)
Stefan Schneider (electronics)
Peter Thiessen (cello, modular)
Micha Acher (sousaphone)
South African free-jazzman and instrument maker Garth Erasmus has been active since the mid ‘80s as a multimedia artist organizing community-based projects in Cape Town. His work draws on his Khoisan heritage and showcases a history of producing art as resistance to apartheid. Whilst his musical credits reach back to the early ’90s, he only recently came to broader attention as a solo artist with Threnody For Khoisan, his 2024 album on Stefan Schneider’s TAL label, a rawly honest and captivating slew of rhythmic, melodic, and hauntingly bloozy work. His follow-up, the All Broken EP, features a set of custom-built instruments, the Broken String Ensemble, which renders his music in unexpectedly spaced-out, heavily atmospheric forms, laced with a lineage of South African jazz and the expression of Khoisan cosmology. His non-academic approach to sound and music was always fueled by a desire to reconnect with the land and with the indigenous knowledge of the Khoisan, whose struggle for First Nation status continues.
https://gartherasmus.bandcamp.com/
Artist
