Zemi or Semi in Japanese means Cicada or the insect Jangkrik in Indonesian. In America there is a special kind of Cicada that only appears above ground for 30 days every 17 years, called the Magicicada (or Magic Cicada). It is an above ground life that almost solely consists of singing very loudly, flying around to find a mate, mating and dying. These specific cicadas are part of many native mythologies and beliefs. Shamans would use their bodies in magical and healing medicines; artists and holy people would depict cicadas often as symbols of resurrection, and rebirth. There are still tribes of people that place the body of a dead Magicicada under the tongue of deceased relatives before being burried in the ground. They believe the cicada spirit will guide them through the Death Bardo and ultimately bring their souls to earth or heaven when the Cicadas appear again 17 years later.
Zemi17 is an artist pseudonym I adopted for sound and multi media projects, inspired by the multitude of inter continental stories of the mythic cicada. The goals of the Zemi17 project is to extend the legacy and sensibilities of magic seen in nature, and harmoniously interoperate and fuse this magic with our understanding of modern society through the medium of the creative tools of the technological age.
The Current:I am from New York, but I lived in Indonesia 2004 - 2006, changing my focus from experiemental electronic music (that often flirted with technoish music, a genre I called Space Haus) to studying Gamelan and regional folk music. I first lived in Yogyakarta and focused on learning a rare strange archaic form called Sekaten , and then moved to Bali to learn yet another rare seldomly played sacred gamelan called Slonding. In my last year in Indonesia I began to fuse the concepts and energies I had learned with the work and intentionality I had before the move. I am back in New York now for about a year, processing and expanding, balancing and living inside the work in progress.
If you would like to purchase high quality 320k mp3s or the orignal .wav space haus track, you can download them from beatsdigital through the player below:
If you are a producer, I would probably rather trade tracks with you than have any kind of commercial exchange - so send me a message and we can work it out.