The Yarns Ensemble
is a gathering. It's a circle, a ritual, a weaving of frequencies. Initiated by Berlin- based drummer, composer, and creative producer Lukas Akintaya also known as Adeolu, this collective brings together African and Afro-diasporic musicians for a practice of sonic remembering and community- based storytelling. Featuring Gugulethu Duma (South Africa Dumama) on voice and FX, Cassie Kinoshi on saxophone and FX, and Tagara Mhizha on bass and FX, the ensemble draws its pulse from a shared belief: music is spirit work. Born from the desire to reclaim the sacred in sound, The Yarns Ensemble is anchored in yarning, a term rooted in Aboriginal traditions that speaks to storytelling as a practice of building and belonging. It’s a methodology of care, one that resonates across Indigenous, African, and diasporic lineages. In this space, yarning becomes more than narrative—it becomes rhythm, breath, and a practice of being with what is (t)here, and what exists beyond the beyond. Improvisation lies at the heart of their work, not as performance, but as a therapeutic modality. A way of ritualizing modes of togetherness. A way of responding to the cacophony of the moment with openness and presence. Together, they use sound to locate themselves in the now, to shape space for feeling, listening, and attuning. Through their process, they explore how collective music-making can sustain us, and offer routes toward not only learning to live with damage, but to healing. Their sound is immersive and alive, built on deep listening and textural play. Their sound moves through layered sonic landscapes—gritty and luminous, grounded and expansive. Drums, bass, voice, and saxophone intertwine with electronic hues, forming an ecosystem of sound that honors the complexity of embodied ancestral memory and resists static form. Their conception residency with Zentrum under constructon, the new center for jazz and improvised music, unfolded like ritual: bodywork, guided meditation, communal writing, and free improvisation as portals into a shared sonic consciousness. This was not about perfection. It was about presence. About listening through the body and into the space between. As drummer and initiator Adeolu reflects: "Jazz, at its root, is community music. A spiritual language of displaced people finding home - together." Here, jazz is not a genre but a living, breathing practice. The Yarns Ensemble doesn’t perform music; they listen it into being. They resist the cult of the individual artist, embracing instead a deeply collaborative spirit that welcomes contradiction, celebrates multiplicity, and remembers what it means to belong. In a time of rupture and reckoning, The Yarns Ensemble offers a blueprint for sonic communion. They are not asking for answers—they are asking us to stay with the indescribable noise. To listen in the dark. To practice being here, together.
