Sanctum Santorium - Tumi Mogorosi

The idea of ancestry has been a pervasive theme among musicians and other poets for time immemorial, and it still remains an exegesis for emotive self-expression that forever connects the past with the present. It's therefore not surprising that modern jazz continues to explore and innovate expressions beyond the current, forging threads weaved in the contemporary from rags of the vintage for future languages. 

And this seems to be case in point for Tumi Mogorosi's onslaught against blunders of an otherwise apologetic local music scene, his studio album being a testament of a thousand days of dogged practice rituals that deepened the mystery of the mastery of Sanctum Sanctorium. But, composing from a drum kit? That's the dotard in me dabbling in the misty bars full of jazz jargon like poly-rhythms and...

I read once that a drummer named Buddy Rich would have his drum set positioned closest to the audience, perhaps a narcissistic character but hey, would compositions from a drummer sound better from the front row? Maybe not. but nonetheless here is a recording that proves that an improved contemplation of traditionalist rhythmic vocabulary can perfectly articulate his fragile textures and dynamic time signatures. 

There are blazing solos by his inimitable band member folded around moods set by his brushes on skins, but he doesn't stick out like a nail waiting hammers. The sound bears technical proficiency of a collective experience, perhaps because 'no man has no ancestor', but ultimately because like a marching troop with snare around his shoulder, he is one among many.

Sanctum Sanctorium is worried music to be wrestled with, enormously complex compositions, his near arthritic right ankle twisting on a nervous hi hat pedal. For the not so well versed jazzoids, the album can be frustratingly abstruse, lost in its quirky techniques most might find pretentious. Yet it is overall gem of inner-drumming and a sensual sanctity. It is a two hour jazz workout riddled with what sounds like memory slips, a dues-paying record driven by gritty beats steering an inimitable troupe of seasoned musos through ghostly ancient tabernacles.

For Tumi to traverse the Project ELO phase musically unscathed, one would credit his life partner Gabi Motuba for being his anchor in an oily pond piled with instrumentalist mannequins vying for shelf-life. Listening to Gabi's vocals, I also felt a resonance of birth, fresh and riveting that shred whatever melancholy clouds the album's vocally led compositions. Such music was clearly bred from love and borne unto us like their daughter, whom the couple named Thari. 

Hers is voice keeping wits of a crafty jazz trip with musicians on a bout with subtle fate. There's Pianist Malcolm Braff lifting multiple veils with each seemingly distracted chord while bassist Sebastien Schuster and celloist Andreas Plattner, incendiary in their conversation with souls beaten out of Tumi's skins.

Will the album enter the annals of history is one among the most daring and improvisational collection of musical expressions, or just another journey to soon be short lived? That will be answered by the many ears listening to his laments, as well his colleagues serenades within their eternal hymn of travails.

Yet, I firmly believe that if music like theirs can calm a pantheon of angry deities and appease their ancestors, so can their song help revive our lost ones and heal through vibrations our scarred humanness. Here, we have all stepped into the Holy Of Hollies, and our ailments might find balm and oil for our muted voices.