TebuSpace Originals
Sonic Rituals
An Afro-Latin jazz framework for wellbeing.
A practice-based research and creative project exploring how music can support wellbeing, connection and reflection.
- Developing
- Doctoral research
- Workshop practice
- Wellbeing
Status
Developing. The research and the music are taking shape; an excerpt is on this page, and the podcast series and workshops follow.
Pygmee
Listen · 1:10
Tebu, The Unboxed Musician
Rooted in my experience as a musician, composer and educator, the project brings together African rhythms, Afro-Latin jazz, improvisation and collaborative music-making. At its heart is a simple question: can music become a ritual for wellbeing, connection and transformation?
Through original compositions, performances, conversations, workshops and a multimedia podcast series, I explore what happens when people come together through rhythm and sound. The project also looks at the relationship between musical traditions and contemporary life, asking how African rhythmic practices and Afro-Latin jazz can create new ways of connecting, expressing ourselves and building community.
Sonic Rituals is both a doctoral research project and a creative journey, using music not only as something to listen to, but as something we can experience, share and explore together.
Rhythm as a shared clock
A group playing a cycle together has to agree on time without discussing it. That agreement is doing something: attention narrows, breathing settles, and people who arrived as strangers start to anticipate each other.
The work takes traditional rhythmic cycles and uses them as they are used at home, as a structure that holds a group, rather than a lesson to be assessed.
Improvisation as trust
Improvising in front of other people is a small act of exposure, and being received well is a small act of repair. Sessions are built so that offering something and having it answered becomes ordinary.
Nobody is asked to be good. The measure is whether the room keeps going when someone plays the unexpected, and it does, which is usually the thing participants remember.
The research
Sonic Rituals is practice-based enquiry: the workshops are the research, and what is learned in them shapes the talks and lectures given to universities, arts organisations and community partners.
The questions are deliberately plain. What does playing together actually do to people? Which part of that is the music, and which is simply being in a room with others? What has to be true for it to work with a group that did not choose to be there?
Working with partners
The strand is delivered with schools, universities, community organisations and wellbeing services, sometimes as a single session, more often as a series, because the interesting changes show up over weeks rather than hours.
Gallery
From the work
Photography and artwork from the project.
Poster for the podcast series. 
A rhythm circle mid-session. 
Sharing the research with a university audience.
Also in Originals
More from the portfolio
Bring Sonic Rituals to your setting
The strand runs with schools, universities, community groups and wellbeing partners, as single sessions or extended series. Research collaborations are welcome.
Or email info@tebuspace.com, replies within two working days.