Tamangur by Thomas Rohrer

'Tamangur' is a journey, a personal voyage in listening, an audio-trip in search of poetic potential in field recording by itinerant musician Thomas Rohrer, in Brazil and Switzerland between 2010 and 2018. The presented tracks cast a resonant sonic net between South American and Swiss soundscapes, jointly creating contingent realities that form a diaphanous yet riveting transatlantic narrative. Thomas Rohrer’s Tamangur takes us from a Brazilian indigenous Krahô village to windy, alpine cowbell hillsides in Switzerland, and farther afield.

Rohrer spent about half of his life in each of these countries' continents, as a musician* and also as a collector of field recordings. Apart from the obvious differences in many aspects of life, Brazil and Switzerland are integral parts of his biography and so it felt natural to bring them together. Tamangur is guided by Rohrer’s own subjective experience and a sensitive exploration of hidden connections and contrasts between the recorded sounds and places. All tracks are unprocessed and non-overdubbed stereo recordings. The beauty of the in-between and beyond manifests itself in the radical curation and subtle dramaturgy of the tracks, which over the time span of two years, have been distilled and transformed into Tamangur.

The recordings from Brazil come from a ten-day visit in 2010 to the Krahô Village Aldeia Nova in Brazil. The Krahô are an indigenous Timbira Gê people of northeastern Brazil. Many of the recordings in Switzerland were made during a three-week listening and recording expedition through alpine and rural places. In two tracks, Thomas Rohrer participates actively as a musician and player of the rabeca (Brazilian fiddle) as well as the bowed fence, improvising with/in the field. Every track has its own history. (Refer to track notes by Rohrer who kept brief journal entries for each recording)

Thomas Rohrer is from Switzerland and has been living in Sao Paulo, Brazil since 1995. He began his musical studies as a violinist and later studied saxophone at the jazz department of Lucerne University. His work with rabeca and soprano saxophone is mainly focused on free improvisation, but beyond this, his sonic practice also exists in dialogue with traditional Brazilian music like in Ponto br.