Umkhumbi kaMa

I'm a man with conversation skills and I'm a man with a hundred dollar bills

I’m an alternative guitarist/composer and vocalist originally from Camden, London.

Currently, I’m incorporating Nu Jazz/Neo-soul/Post-rock elements into my music and have been writing and recording new material autonomously.

I’ve recently been fully composing, recording and mixing my own music. All guitar playing and singing is live, whilst the rest of the arrangements are recorded by quantising regions of MIDI instruments. No built-in loops are used.

Having previously been a guitarist/singer/songwriter for several years writing and performing solo at gigs around London including being featured at the Turning Point festival at the Roundhouse in 2010, I decided to make a transition from gigging and concentrate on recording by exploring other genres of music. I’ve studied and taken inspiration from the piano/keyboard playing of Jazz artists like Chick Corea, McCoy Tyner and Donald Fagen and the guitar touch and tonality of guitarists such as, but not limited to, Al Di Meola, Carlos Alomar, Steely Dan’s regular session guitarists, Elliot Randall and Larry Carlton, and David Gilmour from Pink Floyd.
The recent emergence of alternative jazz artists such as 7th Sense, Alfa Mist, Yussef Dayes and the Jazz Refreshed movement have also served as inspiration, as do the genres of dub, EDM and the London jazz scene.

I found jazz, in particular, an interesting genre to explore, and furthermore, a not so familiar territory of music I could take the challenge in creating.

Umkhumbi kaMa

Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O