Victor Gama

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• Victor Gama (Pangeia Instrumentos)

• country:
  Portugal
• style(s):
  Contemporary World
• label:
  not signed
• type:
  Solist
• gender:
  male
• instrumentation:
  instrumental
• artist submitted by:
  Red Orange

Victor Gama was born in Angola and currently lives in Sintra, Portugal. He is a composer, performer, designer of innovative musical instruments as well as an electronics engineer.

Several of his music works have been recorded on CD including Pangeia Instrumentos on Aphex Twin's Rephlex Records.

He has exhibited his instruments and sound installations and performed extensively in Africa, Latin America, USA, Canada and Europe having received a Project Development Award by Visiting Arts/British Council for his exhibition and performance at Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast in 2004. Gama is part of the "Berimbau-Ungu" project with the legendary Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos with whom he has recently toured in Southern Africa. He is part of The Folk Songs Trio with William Parker and Guillermo E. Brown. The collaboration originated from a commission by the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York. The Trio has since toured Portugal and Austria in 2007. Gama has participated at Artificial Afrika, an exhibition in New York curated by Vernon Reid and C. Daniel Dawson. He has recorded and played live with celebrated british sound arist Max Eastley and is presently collaborating with the Kronos Quartet and designing innovative interactive musical instruments for the National Museums of Scotland.

Gama initiated the Pangeia Instrumentos project in the early 90's in which he uses form as a variable in the composition process. He has since developed The Golian Modes Theory in which the score has a three dimensional component. The Golian Modes are four musical modes derived from the ancient Kongo/Angolan graphic writing system known as "Bidimbu". The basis of the Golian Modes are the fundamental cosmogram known as "Dikenga", and the concept of "N'kizy", a religious object that is used to establish communication with the ancestor's world.

Gama has introduced in his work technologies such as CAD/CAM, laser stereolithography, injection molding and pulse cutting in collaborations with the University of Loughbourough, London Metropolitan University and the Rapid Prototyping Consortium in the UK.

He has initiated and produced the Odantalan project in Luanda, Angola in 2002, an artistic residency and conference with musicians, art historians and religious leaders from Angola, Portugal, Colombia, Cuba and Brazil. The project analyses the processes of resistance that Africans once used against cultural imposition and devises new strategies and methods of cultural generation.

He has also initiated the Tsikaya project, the first digital archive of tradional musics in Angola, a partnership between his organization PangeiArt and the Angolan NGO's ADRA/Bismas from Angola.

Several of his works and projects have been sponsored and commissioned by The Prince Claus Fund, The Gulbenkian Foundation, National Museums of Scotland, Arts NK, Instituto Camoes, The Portuguese Performing Arts Council, CNCDP/ Portuguese Council of Ministers, Netherlands Institute for Southern Africa, Visiting Arts/British Council, Arts Council England and EPAL Portugal.