Beginner Jazz Voice

Gugulethu Duma (aka DUMAMA) is a South African, Berlin based performer, composer, and voice practitioner working at the intersection of sound, embodied practice, and cultural memory. Raised in a family of ritual and choral singers, her earliest teachers were community, ceremony, and collective prayer. These foundations continue to shape a practice where voice is both inheritance and invention.

Holding an MA in Ethnochoreology and Ethnomusicology, she approaches sound as research and lived experience. She created Ancestral Body Noise, a methodology that understands the voice not only as an instrument, but as an archive, architecture, and living rhythm. Her work moves fluidly between jazz informed improvisation, Xhosa vocal traditions, chant-making, composition, experimental vocality, and performance research.

As a touring artist, Gugulethu has performed internationally across live music, sound art, film, and museum contexts. Her work has been presented at festivals and institutions including Rewire Festival in The Hague, Jazzfest Berlin, the Berlin Jazz Festival, and collaborative research platforms at Akademie der Künste in Berlin. She has undertaken residencies such as the Musicboard Berlin Residency and the Black Girls Glow Co-creation Residency in Accra, and her performances have unfolded in concert halls, independent venues, galleries, museums and site responsive environments across Europe, USA and South Africa. Alongside her concert practice, she composes for film and interdisciplinary projects, weaving voice into cinematic and installation based forms.

As an educator, she works with beginners, emerging artists, and established performers alike. Her teaching centres embodied vocal awareness, listening as relational practice, and expressive authorship, integrating technique with cultural and political context.

At the core of her work is a clear proposition: the voice is not separate from the body, and the body is not separate from history. When we sing, we reorganise memory, presence, and possibility.