Composer · Performer · Researcher
Music Composition · Duke University
PhD Researcher
A practice rooted in ancestral knowledge and speculative futures — weaving indigenous sound archives, sacred ritual, and experimental electronics into living ceremony.
Selected venues
Berlin Philharmonie · Wiener Festwochen
Münchener Biennale · Angels of Anarchy, Cologne & Vienna
Afro-Electronic Performance Project
A solo performance alter-ego and live electronic project fusing Ndebele aesthetics, ancestral soundscapes, and digital production. ZENZI operates at the intersection of ritual, technology, and embodied Afrofuturist performance — deploying custom Max/MSP environments, found sonic archives, and layered vocal processing to construct immersive sonic ceremonies.
Listen — set excerpt
Opera
A chamber opera for Southern African instruments, umngqokolo throat singing, and electronics. Libretto by Shanice Ndlovu. Premiered at Münchener Biennale, IsiThunzi inhabits the liminal space between body and spirit, drawing on ancestral transmission as compositional method.
Orchestral & Ensemble
A body of orchestral and chamber work rooted in indigenous sonic philosophy and decolonial compositional practice. Ancestral Intelligence, commissioned by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (SOV), weaves ancestral knowledge systems into the Western symphonic form. Nomadic Nirvana extends this language into string quartet writing — commissioned for chamber performance.
Listen — Ancestral Intelligence (SOV), 10:30–13:30
Watch — Nomadic Nirvana, string quartet
Generative AI · Complementary Score
A sonic essay and generative AI composition exploring queer lives in pre-colonial Africa — the leadership roles, revered gender identities, and openly embraced sexualities that colonial encounter sought to erase. The score operates as an explorative, gamified notation system: rather than fixed instructions, performers navigate a field of possibilities sourced from multiple AI-generated accounts of pre-colonial queerness, each performance a different traversal of the same living archive of erased histories.
Listen — excerpt
Decolonial Archive Collective
A digital archival project recovering and preserving endangered Southern African indigenous sounds, operating as a Pan-African sound commons. The UMSAMO strand extends this into political-sonic history: a cross-continental exploration of liberation movements through their music — tracing marrabenta (Mozambique), jiti (Zimbabwe), marabi and mbaqanga (South Africa), hi-life (West Africa), and electro-chaabi (North Africa) as sonic records of resistance, migration, and decolonial becoming.
Film Score
Original score and sonic world-building for the feature film Humdrumm. The score integrates electronic composition with textural field recordings, extending the compositional language developed across live performance work into the cinematic frame.
Listen — Tuwa (theme), piano-to-vocals transition
Opera, orchestral and chamber works, and electroacoustic scores informed by Ubuntu Futurism — a framework bridging ancestral knowledge systems with speculative compositional futures.
Live electronic and ritual performance as ZENZI, developed through residencies and presentations at leading European new music venues including Berlin Philharmonie and Wiener Festwochen.
PhD in Music Composition at Duke University. Research focuses on decolonial archival methodologies, indigenous sound ecologies, and the politics of musical heritage in Southern Africa.
Live Recording
