Where are the Keys?

<p>Carving its way through the poetic, <em>Where are the Keys?</em> is a composition that questions the questionable. From the album <em>Group Theory: Black Music</em>.</p> <p>Since his international debut on Jazzman Records in 2014 with Project ELO, Tumi Mogorosi has been in the vanguard of the South African creative music scene’s burgeoning outernational dimension, taking the drummer’s chair in both Shabaka Hutchings’ Shabaka and The Ancestors formation and with avant-garde noiseniks The Wretched.</p> <p>This track features poetry by Lesego Rampolokeng, whose poetry collection <em>When the Fires Go Down</em> is available from Black Ghost Books.</p> <p>——</p> <p>Python squeeze accordion<br /> Past and future juice in this<br /> Sewer turtles + spittle spewers<br /> Hades hate gate-keep Dominion?<br /> We rattle keys to the magic kingdom<br /> Dread antennae pick up extraterrestrial, Toshman<br /> AMABUTHO it in a Zim jam-anthem<br /> The Omega factor<br /> Land’s spirit<br /> All on beneath within around + us in it<br /> A linkage infinite<br /> Sheet music Hieroglyphic-writ<br /> Rhythm Pulsate<br /> Silence’s violence discord swallow tongue<br /> Percussion tattoo down to bass-marrow<br /> Ivory tinkle fluid spinal tap<br /> No perjury… scalpels out …Gwala surgery<br /> Horns gore deep Essence core<br /> Ancestral voices war-dance out God’s Window<br /> Heart + mind melody makes spines harmonise with entrails/innards<br /> Electric-storm censor castles /<br /> injustice palaces<br /> Parcel gutted out to stark-<br /> dark posterity<br /> We come in… Disembowelment reclamation mission mean<br /> Power addict abject state<br /> Disseminate obscene – control virus value system dictate<br /> Shatter-machine music cut through<br /> minds rhyme<br /> with how hearts vibrate in time<br /> Liberatory beats in tandem<br /> DREAD REVERB… ultrasonic vocab<br /> theory to praxis radical process<br /> MUD BOUND WORDSOUND GENESIS<br /> Life…Revelation<br /> Revolution in Black Movement<br /> Sleepy hollow shadow notes<br /> Creep thru senses crevices<br /> dark embrace…<br /> Genius resides in BLACKNESS<br /> Thaba Bosiu<br /> Nocturnal Mountain raised fist spirit habitat<br /> Blood rivers mystic baffles psychics + psychiatrists<br /> How Kgalagadi muddies Limpopo yet keep the San tomb clean<br /> Blues…Black…Darker than grey<br /> Creation sounds Gold Reef Mine Rockfall<br /> crush-sounds<br /> Guitar-string gun spit tear flesh<br /> Black sonic science<br /> Darkest Acoustics<br /> Black slaughter up from under<br /> back of beyond the lash /swish<br /> Existence level cockroach<br /> Even there the serpentine<br /> between the keys in Fikile’s pianoed spinal-column<br /> Set it of… on Broken bone saxophone moan<br /> Morning horn …the dawning<br /> Black dreams are born… we’re on<br /> Jackboot sense smash<br /> Slit wrists quench thirst<br /> Vulcan tangle mangle flesh<br /> A Mengele experiment<br /> Blood clash brainsplash<br /> Piteous Black Sash<br /> Slash that…vinyl scratch<br /> The pain slide through the gash<br /> Tripping off morning horns<br /> Past the dawning Black futures are born<br /> Drum-Bang out hunger pang<br /> What the cut throat sang<br /> creation music politic It<br /> both mystic +concrete<br /> No one Dimension<br /> Sound first -opp<br /> then com-pressed<br /> through Hell-Gates<br /> Reverberate across space + time<br /> Locked in with the rhyme<br /> They genocide ideology revamp<br /> concentration camped out<br /> Lüderitz to Auschwitz<br /> Death blood-lines<br /> holocaust inheritance<br /> Shark / Death Island choice<br /> Broken wind instruments<br /> Murderous voices<br /> poison-gas class-sick as Wagnerian<br /> Impeach the epoch<br /> from torture to echo-chambers<br /> Unborn murmurs<br /> Carcasses on conscience<br /> corpse consciousness<br /> Fart-bass tremors<br /> Ancient howls posterity whispers<br /> Drum – thunder – roll this present<br /> history – traumatic sonic remedy<br /> Mass therapy frequency music<br /> Heal-force vibratory<br /> Without amnesiac side-effect<br /> Brain on the Col-<br /> Trane tracks Mthuli ka Shezi<br /> Shaka spears ?<br /> Wine curtain torn<br /> Blood on the sugar cane<br /> Slave sweat made Hullets sweet<br /> Dropped in dum-dum<br /> staccato in Cape Flat<br /> Dop rhythm<br /> Kaffir Coolie Hot-Not<br /> Rim-shot<br /> Sky burst<br /> Heaven come rest on Africa breast<br /> Impeach the epoch<br /> Put the age on trial<br /> Single file execute the times<br /> Perennial race war crimes<br /> meanwhile they luxuriate in class climes<br /> From the rubble<br /> bubble-bloodbath-salts<br /> Black sweat makes malts<br /> Armoured noise against silence’s pestilence<br /> facing violence<br /> for Mongezi<br /> Lymphatic fluid polished<br /> Cullinan Diamond<br /> Kimberley Gold……………………………<br /> The Atlantic howls cold in skeleton<br /> commerce spells trap<br /> Hells bells demonic snares<br /> Liberty’s eyes stare blinder than Justice<br /> Dark angelic notes Volcanic<br /> velvet at core<br /> Black image creation Breath<br /> Brotherhood in Blue Notes<br /> Motherless child feeling<br /> birthed hanging from the ceiling<br /> hanging trees<br /> grief hit surface<br /> Magnum force drum-<br /> pierce up to putrid existence core<br /> quest:<br /> Strike the life Motherlode</p>