Karl-Martin Almqvist Ababhemu Quartet

"The seed for this quartet  and recording was sown back in 2014 when I received a message on the messenger app from a pianist unknown to me, who asked if I wanted to come to Johannesburg and record an album and later play at some festivals. I had performed several times before in South Africa. I had also fallen in love with both the country and the people.

I didn't need many seconds to accept the offer. After some logistical trials, the recording took place over a few days in April 2014. Nduduzo Makhathini picked me up at OR Tambo International airport on the morning of the first day of recording. It was the first time we met physically. However, the common feeling was that we had known each other for a long time. Until this moment, we had only communicated via email and a few video calls. I almost immediately felt a lot of confidence in Nduduzo  through the way he talked about the music, the communication. Also because of what was unsaid between the lines."

- Karl-Martin Almqvist

The days in the studio in Johannesburg resulted in Nduduzo's double CD Listening to the Ground. The album also features Norwegian bassist Magne Thormodsæter and South African drummer Ayanda Sikade. This album has had great impact and significance for a younger generation of South African musicians in particular. In the following years Karl-Martin traveled several times to South Africa to perform at festivals in Johannesburg and Cape Town with Nduduzo.

The will and desire to continue and develop the collaboration grew over the years and finally Almqvist started a quartet with the core musicians from the recording in 2014. The Ababhemu Quartet was started, and after a few canceled years due to the pandemic, the quartet premiered at the Ystad International Jazz Festival in August 2022.

The days after the concert at the festival in Ystad, the quartet recorded their debut album: Karl-Martin Almqvist Ababhemu Quartet - The Travelers. This quartet puts forward the message of brotherhood across colored lines, and across geography. The Ababhemu Quartet plays against the history of coloniality and puts the sound in the center of how we can imagine a world that is united and goes against the historical catastrophies. The Ababhemu Quartet is all about Trust and Brotherhood.

Ikaya. Home.

With what density does the earth carry us? With which note? Readily recognizable.

The resonance as our feet touch the ground, the prints we leave behind.

What note calls to you?

The porous limestone, resilient, springy underfoot, the chord of the earth resounds through me.

I hear its echo unclothed in Karl-Martin Almqvist’s reed, the seasons’ gaze in Nduduzo Makhathini’s touch of the keys.

They carry the dreamy rest of deep forests, the neon lights of a  sleepless, unsedated city, a chord that moves upwards through the  architecture. In this movement, Värmland aligns with Johannesburg,  Stockholm with New York, and that renovated barn where I first heard  Karl- Martin play.

I recognized that voice.

As you will recognize it through the music Karl-Martin Almqvist  wrote for the Ababhemu Quartet: pianist Nduduzo Makhathini, drummer  Ayanda Sikade and bassist Magne Thormodsæter.

The presence and honesty in asking new questions. Striving to  find the road less travelled. This is the road of voices we have not yet  heard. Music sprung from a modal tradition. Folk. Church. Freedom.

The resonance of footsteps.

A lightness towards being, a weightlessness of care for the other. Voices building a home where they meet for supper:

Coltrane, Mankunku, Gullin,

Jan Johansson, Börje Fredriksson, Abdullah Ibrahim.

When darkness falls, and rests upon the quartet, it breathes  spirit into Smangaliso– a song of the child as miracle, Ubizo- of music  as calling. Ababhemu - of legend as keeper.

”I am because you are”. The radical mutuality of Ntu, the philosophy of the human condition.

”I am because you are”. Music as an expression of a deeper connection.

A communion resting on grounds, stretching beyond. Where earth is  dreaming us, like the day carries echoes of those that walked before.

Those who built their nests of cymbals. Those who breathe the bass lines.

Resting like a shadowy spirit in Almqvist and Makhathini. Children of the collective unconscious.

Home. Ikaya.

- Magnus Östnäs