Chimurenganyana: Music Notebook by Ari Sitas (2023)

“Insurrections was and is a project and an idea. The project brought together poets, composers and musicians from South Africa and India – although an Ethiopian or two crept in since to make description difficult! It was put together to produce a CD, a mini-tour of both countries, and to make a lot of noise. As an idea, it marked the beginning of a voyage that could go in many exciting directions because it experimented with something non-trivial: does the musical language of these spaces produce a new way of doing things?”


Music Notebook is at once a scrapbook, a bildungsroman, a playlist and a diary of Ari Sitas’ decade-long collaboration with the Insurrections Ensemble, the all ways-expanding troupe of sonic arkeologists and improvisors digging the AfroAsian seas for memories of the “deep song”.