BIO
Gugulethu Duma (aka Dumama) is a musician / composer / sonic poet / creative producer from the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Her practice plays with the deconstruction and critique of archaic modes of representation in Southern African/African sonic and performance culture, while also composing music for herself and others. As a storyteller and lyricist she weaves together childhood songs, stories and personal memories with electronic hues and gestures, experimenting with the divide between traditional oral culture and futuristic, globally oriented poetics in her embodiement of an African technological consciousness.
The debut album from her music duo, dumama + kechou, titled ‘buffering juju’ was released in March 2020 (as the international lockdown for COVID-19 started) with South African Independent Label, Mushroom Hour Half hour. Rooted in improvisation, she predominantly works with voice, uHadi (a traditional Xhosa bow instrument), live vocal effected loops, processors, field recordings and distortions for her performances and compositions. Their short film, Mother Time premiered with Pan African Music. She studied under celerated bow master, composer and vocalist Dr Madosini Lathozi before receiving a full Erusmus Scholarship to study a Masters in Dance Knowledge, Practice and Heritage.
Her work has been presented at cultural institutions and festivals such as SAVVY Contemporary, Gropius Bau, Humboldt Forum, Boiler Room x Total Refreshment Center, Zeits Mocaa, Oyoun Kultur NeuDenken, Berlin Xjazz, Berghain Kantine, Chimurenga, KONJO and many other curated events around South Africa, Senegal, Berlin and USA.
As a One Beat Alumni (2018), she toured the East Coast of the United Satates for a 6 week program, composing and perfomring collaborative bodies of work. The work was in response to NASA’s landmark Voyager Golden Record through the lens of digital culture and global folklore. As an alumni, she was invited to contribute towards the Generation Equality Forum held in Paris, 2021.
Her Sound Art Practice includes virtual theater works, Another Kind as part of the National Arts Festival, South Africa (2021). She has contributed sound to Dunja Herzog's installation, HUM as well as sound design for her own research for her Masters project Ancestral Body Noise.
She has been a co-conspiror for the work, DZATA: Instittue of Technological Consciousness in collaboration with Lo-Def Film Factory and Mozilla Firefox. Here, she was responsible for writing music and developing sound as a character. She has also led podcast project State(s) Capture(d) Mixtape(s) alongside Jessica Korp with Refuge Worldwide, where they explored the sonic universes of Ethiopia and South Africa through the lens of women and children songs. Her Oyouniverse podcast work with Oyoun Kultur Nedenken manifested as a synthesis of her dissertation research, interviewing selected participants from her self directed residency, Ancestral Body Noise.
As an emerging curator and cultural organiser, Gugulethu intentionally works to bring artists together in workshops and performances centered around Embodied Social Justice, while unfolding and activating the voice(s) through unique narrative making processes. She curated an installation and sound work titled, Black Post Box at Oyoun KulturNeudenken. Her 6 week, self - led group research residency ancestral body noise, produced in collaboration with Oyoun Berlin, premiered at the festival, Emobodied Temporalities , as as a performance workshop intervention. She co-created (De)coding Trajectories with dance therapist and performance artist, Ahmad Baba. (De)Coding Trajectories performance research process took place in Prague supported by Perform Europe. She also fascillitated a workshop at Universitär der Künste's Recognizing Barriers seminar.
She has been an artist in residence with the Solo Magic Radical Black Femme Project, curated by Base Arts (2021) Seattle, One Beat Music, Goethe Talents, Nirox and Red Bull Music.