Kranzelbinder: Let's drink to Lumumba!

The goal of the SWR NEWJazz Meeting is to help artists develop exciting projects that would be difficult to realize under conventional conditions. Launched in 1966, this legendary sound laboratory has become a driving force for new developments in jazz over the course of its more than 50-year history. The young Lukas Kranzelbinder, curator of the 2018 edition, is already considered one of the most active and versatile bassists on the Austrian music scene. For this project, he has brought together five male artists and one female artist, including the writer Fiston Mwanza Mujila, who together form the band "On boit lumumba – We drink lumumba!" The name of the album and the band refers on the one hand to Patrice Lumumba (the first Congolese Prime Minister and African freedom fighter at the beginning of the 1960s), and on the other to the popular drink made of cocoa, rum, and milk. And as the curator himself notes: "There is a real absurdity to it, which in turn has a connection to the themes that Fiston deals with in his texts and his books."