Videos & Live Audio

 

Turbulence and Pulse Quartet - Live at Chiesa di Pazzo Lupi, Johannesburg

Another Time Ensemble - Live in Cairo

 
 
 

Press

“Blending free jazz with South African protest music and rigorous academic study, the Cape Town drummer connects jazz tradition to contemporary oppression, and points a way forward for the music.” — Pitchfork

“An album that seems to have almost everything you could ask for — lovely songcraft; farseeing poetry, spoken and sometimes sung; patient, evocative improvising; generations of history coursing through it like a bloodstream” — The New York Times

“South African drummer Asher Gamedze's Turbulence And Pulse is a magnificent, gutsy, stirring piece of work, authentic to its core.” — All About Jazz

“There’s an immediacy to this music, a sense of universal relevance.” — Bandcamp

Projects

Turbulence and Pulse Quartet

Asher Gamedze (drums)
Vimbs Mavimbs (bass)
Buddy Wells (tenor saxophone)
Robin Fassie (trumpet)

Another Time Ensemble

Asher Gamedze (drums)
Maurice Louca (synthesisers)
Adham Zidan (bass)
Alan Bishop (alto saxophone)
Chérif El-Masri (guitar)

Duo

Asher Gamedze (drums)
Xristian Espinoza (saxophone)

Black Lungs

10-piece ensemble, line up on request

Core units, sub. to change

Booking

Agent

Maxime Libiszewski

Territories

Europe & UK

On tour

Turbulence and Pulse Quartet
November 2025

Another Time Ensemble
On request

Black Lungs
July 2025
On request

 
 
 

Selected discography

 
  • Asher Gamedze is a cultural worker based in Cape Town, South Africa, involved in music, education, and history. As an independent musician he works a drummer, composer, and bandleader. A versatile drummer with an open sound and sensibility, Gamedze plays across and between multiple traditions of music including free improvisation, soul music, rock ‘n roll, and many locally situated traditions from Southern Africa.

    Asher has performed extensively in South Africa and other parts of the African continent including Egypt, Lesotho, and Malawi. He has been on multiple European tours and has also played some gigs in the USA, particularly in Chicago where he has a big community. Gamedze’s debut record as a bandleader, Dialectic Soul, was released to critical acclaim in 2020. The record received high ranks on Pitchfork and The New York Times‘s top ten jazz albums of the year, as well as winning ‘Best Traditional Jazz Album’ at the Mzantsi Jazz Awards. Gamedze’s second release, Out Side Work, consisting of two improvised duets with saxophone players Alan Bishop and Xristian Espinoza, came out in April 2022. He toured that record with the reedman Espinoza in Europe in September 2022 and, in November 2022, toured Dialectic Soul, playing venues and festivals such as Jazzfest Berlin, Le Guess Who? and Flagey.

    He has recently played on the following recordings: Luh’ra’s Nice (2022), Xhanti Nokwali’s Umthombo (2022), the Mushroom Hour (Johannesburg) / Total Refreshment Centre (London) collaboration On Our Own Clock (2021), Manny Walters’Dark Halo (2019) and Live at Milestone (2021), as well as both the full-length Angel Bat Dawid albums released on International Anthem, LIVE (2020) and The Oracle (2019). He has performed live with Ben LaMar Gay, Nduduzo Makhathini, Salim Washington, Sharif Shenaoui, Donna Khalife, and many others.