Gould Music

DR. MICHAEL GOULD • Dr. MASIMBA HWATI

ZEBRA COLLECTIVE • BIOGRAPHY

Zebra Collective is an interdisciplinary collaboration between Masimba Hwati, PhD, and Dr. Michael Gould that brings together experimental sound and percussion practice, contemporary art, performance, and embodied research. Rooted in cross-cultural exchange, decolonial inquiry, and indigenous knowledge systems, the collective explores sound as a site of memory, relation, ritual, and knowledge production through collaborative composition, installation, performance, and community engagement.

Michael Gould is an internationally recognized scholar, performer, and educator in drumset and contemporary percussion performance and pedagogy. He is Professor of Music at the University of Michigan and Director of the Center for World Performance Studies. His artistic and research projects explore themes of nature, memory, embodiment, and human timing through performance, collaboration, and interdisciplinary inquiry.

Masimba Hwati is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher, and writer whose practice spans sculpture, sound, performance, micro-politics, and indigenous philosophy. He holds a PhD in Art Practice from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and an MFA from the University of Michigan. His work is held in major public and private collections across Africa, Europe, and North America and includes the publications Der Seeteufel (2022) and Sokunge (As if) (2021), as well as sound works including Mshika-shika Guerilla Poetics and the Black Market (2021), Lakenights (2019), Hwati-Collino (2020), and Soil, Root, Leaf (2025).

Together, Zebra Collective develops artistic and research-based projects that foreground listening as a shared practice of relation, cultural exchange, and critical inquiry, working across academic, artistic, and community contexts.

Click the button below to read our article: Zebra in Motion: Cross-Cultural Poetics of Percussion and Visual Art, Percussive Notes, February, 2026.

ZEBRA COLLECTIVE • SELECTED WORKS

A) Nyami Nyami, Iteration #5, Zebra Collective, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe, July, 2025

B) Nyami Nyami, Iteration #4, Zebra Collective, Stanley 44 Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa, July 2025

C) Nyami Nyami, Water Never Lies (in deep time), Iteration #3, Zebra Collective, Geotechnical Lab, University of Michigan, North Campus, December, 2023.

D) Nyami Nyami und der Schlangeköng der Lausitz, Iteration #2, Zebra Collective, Ogrosen Lausitz, Germany, March, 2023

E) Nyami Nyami, Iteration #1, Zebra Collective, Gallery Tangente, Berlin, Germany, September, 2022

F) Nyami Nyami, Early Score Sketches, 2025