Trumpeter Feya Faku's new album, le Ngoma (The Song), comes from that most South African of places - violence and death. His sixth album, le Ngoma is a dark, melancholic collection of compositions that dwell on dirges for the departed and national peculiarities, like having one's house hijacked."I went deep into the darkness with the music," says Faku, "because of this thing that happened to me, after my property was hijacked and vandalised - that experience is reflected in the opening track, Vandalised."Vandalisedis a roiling piece, angry and despairing, that references the day Faku arrived at a Johannesburg property he was trying to sell with an estate agent and found people living there. With typical South African audacity, the occupiers demanded Faku show them his title deed and other credentials. The house is yet to be sold - adding to the musician's financial precariousness - and the matter is apparently lost in our court system.Faku worked on the album with Swiss musicians Domenic Landolf (tenor sax, alto flute), Jean-Paul Brodbeck (piano), Fabian Gisler (acoustic bass) and Dominic Egli (drums).The album includes several nods to the departed: there is Dirge (for Zim Ngqawana), his former University of Natal Jazz Centre classmate from the 1980s and Miss Benjamin (for Sathima Benjamin) the singer and late former wife of pianist Abdullah Ibrahim. Benjamin died while Faku was recording the album in Basel, Switzerland, and he composed the piece the day after he heard the news.He said: "The first time I went to Basel was with Sathima and Abdullah. I talk about that experience - musicians of that calibre taking me there, trusting me musically. It was a very haunting experience for me, to be back in Basel, with the memories of Sathima, after she died."Faku, who starts a country-wide tour in Durban today to promote the album, says he "creates because of the elders that have come before me. I am because of them." He adds: "My quest is to recognise them, keep them alive."Faku performs at the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Howard College today at 7pm, at East London's Miriam Makeba Centre tomorrow, the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University on Sunday, The Orbit in Johannesburg on July 31 and at Afrikan Freedom Station in Johannesburg on August 2...