Vuma Levin tours his new jazz album

Virtuoso guitarist Vuma Levin starts national tour of his second studio album, Life and Death on the Otherside of the Dream with three concert dates in KwaZulu-Natal

Levin will be surrounded by an impressive array of local and international musicians. On the Durban leg, he will collaborate with pianist, Neil Gonsalves.

Asked about the tour, Levin says: “This music is, on the one hand, a personal reflection on the last seven years that I've spent in the Netherlands in a kind of self-imposed exile away from home. On the other hand it is broader reflection on the crises of the post-Apartheid South African self at home, in the diaspora and in an age of globalisation. Finally, by presenting a series of songs that are deeply hybrid in nature the album is an attempt to implicitly respond the commodification and fetishisation of African art and the cliched ‘single story’ told about South Africa and its people in the West.”

Levin makes use of digital samples and prepared instruments and fuses, contemporary jazz, rock, hip-hop, pop and South African musical forms such as marabi, goema and Nguni-Sotho choral and gourd bow song. All of this hopes to capture and articulate the sonic landscape of South Africa.

Levin began his studies in jazz at age 18, and received lessons from guitar legend, Johnny Fourie. He completed a National Diploma at the Tshwane University of Technology and was presented with the best Guitarist Award (2008). In 2009, he played in the Standard Bank National Youth Jazz Band, with performances at the Grahamstown Jazz Festival and Standard Bank Joy of Jazz Festival.

He then attend the prestigious Conservatorium Van Amsterdam.

He has released two solo albums – The Spectacle of An-other and Life and Death on the Otherside of the Dream– and recorded on 3 others.

For more information visit http://concertssa.co.za