FMFP (FREE MUSIC FREE PALESTINE)

Introduction:

Free Music Free Palestine, or FM Free Palestine (FMFP), is an ensemble of Cape Town-based improvisers including Thandi Gamedze, Zwide Ndwandwe, Ru Slayen, Asher Gamedze , Garth Erasmus, Reza Khota, Keegan Steenkamp and Nobuhle Ashanti. Most of us have, for varying lengths of time and in varying capacities, been associated with and involved in organising work supporting a range of progressive causes at local and international levels. Specifically as FMFP we got together alongside, and as part of the independent solidarity movement that has cohered since 7 October 2023, as a response to the historical and ongoing violence of the Israeli settler colonial state. In various configurations, FMFP has performed at a number of different events –including mass rallies, shabbats against genocide, university occupations and teach-ins, and the Gaza Ceasefire Pilgrimage – and has organized its own performances. Some of FMFP gathered in June 2025 to discuss FMFP as a growing organic concept, histories of our own involvement in Palestine solidarity work, and the place of improvised music within traditions of struggle in South Africa. The following is a highly abridged and edited version of the conversation.

Asher Gamedze: What I’m interested in thinking around with everyone is really what this thing that we have been doing – Free Music Free Palestine – is?

Keegan Steenkamp: I think this is a reaction and a natural reaction by just like-minded, dare I say level-headed people to the whole thing going on. And I think free music, as long as there’s a bubble gum (Temporarily trendy, or Brief Popularity, the way the flavour of chewing gum lasts) formula going on out there that most people are settling for, stands for something. Someone producing free music in the moment, it just stands for the belief that there’s more out there. There’s more to this standardized formula that’s been presented to you than the Israelis that’s invested in all these weapons manufacturers. It just stands for something outside.

Thandi Gamedze: I was thinking about how freedom needs to be defended and needs to be fought for and protected, and it’s contested…

Reza Khota: Right and resisting that urge of power to take something, to take over. And that’s the thing [about FMFP], the vulnerability of it. And I don’t think all free music necessarily has that vulnerability. Sometimes I’ve met Europeans who come here and there’s like a few free music festivals, and they’ve got a very particular idea of what free music should be. And if you’re not like that then you’re not a free jazz musician. But there’s something I think in what we are doing that embraces vulnerability, embraces the freedom to make a mistake and maybe figure it out. And I think that’s maybe metaphorically interesting, right?

Ru Slayen: Yeah. Also, it seems like maybe the most important thing or a crucial thing to it is listening. That’s like most of what you’re doing – listening. And I guess I’m speaking about it as a musician, but the audience obviously also… I guess everyone involved has to be listening as the main thing. And there’s not that many things that you can do as a person where the main thing you’re doing is that.

Thandi Gamedze: Ya and I mean,

I think that listening is an anti-colonial way of engaging.

It’s not jumping in to make a thing what you want it to be, but it’s listening and figuring out how you come into it, what you can offer into that space, how you can contribute, but in a way that the thing flourishes and it gives it life rather than stamping something out to make something else.

Asher Gamedze: For sure. I guess another question I’m thinking about is around being involved in solidarity work and struggle specifically as a musician, as a poet, as a cultural worker, and what you all think about that and the relationship between the pursuit of freedom in the music and outside of it?

We have an established political culture in this country, coming out of some sections of the anti-apartheid struggle, which often relegates music, poetry or ‘culture’ to a compartment or a slot on the programme, even as a ‘break’ from the programme.

And at some level I feel like what we’re trying to do in FMFP is fairly unusual within that culture of organising.

Reza Khota: There’s definitely history around the way music kind of interfaces with these kind of events. Yeah, you’re right. And so [FMFP] has felt for me like a bit of an experiment every time.

Keegan Steenkamp: I think tradition stands for something. And in a way it’s an extension of, or a continuation of the music tradition. We had ties with political struggle in the history of this country, and that’s worth something, at least serving as maybe a point for people to trace the history of that tradition. It feels right, just as a South African musician in this capacity [to be part of FMFP now].

Zwide Ndwandwe: Yeah, true. My thought would be not so much thinking about the past, but the future and thinking about the kids who were there at that stadium [at the mass rally]… Maybe we, ourselves, didn’t have a connection to a previous generation of free music in particular and that kind of inclusion within the political environment. But one memory that’s etched in my mind at the stadium is of Garth kind of blowing, just going ham, and I have this video that I think my partner took and it’s of one of the kids just waving this Palestinian flag while Asher, you are kind of just rumbling, Ru’s also just busy playing. I was, I guess also just fascinated by how she caught that moment because it felt so picturesque or cinematic, to underscore this thing, it’s not a present thing, it’s a future discussion. And what would mean for a child to get the introduction into the world of free music and the world of a free Palestine through that kind of presence of a band just playing all the notes that you can hear at one time and how that can kind of mark the difference in those kids’ listening experiences, but also their sensitivities towards what is possible with music and what is possible with one’s politics and ideology?

Thandi Gamedze: I feel like I think along similar lines maybe, but I’ve just been thinking a lot about the methodology of doing things and how that’s so key and I think often those political spaces can be quite disembodied in that way. So the thing that I’ve been thinking about lately is the idea of rehearsing our way to the world that we are wanting to see or wanting to create. And what that looks like and then it almost makes it not just about the thing that we are trying to get to, but what we are doing now is as much the thing as that in a way. And in a way I feel like this kind of space of the free music and what can happen offers something of that. It is in that moment that it’s creating or rehearsing or pulling into being that world that we’re wanting to see. I think also back to the thing of, with the way that we are present with each other, listening to each other, offering different things into the space at different times, it feels like it’s an embodied kind of methodology of the politics that we’re hoping to, I don’t know, be putting into the world and creating.

This conversation was first published in International Anthem’s zine, Tracing The Lines, vol.3, Chicago, 2024. Re-published in herri with kind permission of FMFP. Special thanks to Ati Khan for making all the connections.