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Issue #05
Contents
editorial
KHADIJA TRACEY HEEGER
Redefined
GEORGE LEWIS
New Music Decolonization in Eight Difficult Steps
GIORGIO AGAMBEN
The Supreme Music. Music and Politics
Theme Social Impact
SAIDIYA HARTMAN
Riot and Refrain
THOMAS BERNHARD
Executioners
WILLEMIEN FRONEMAN & STEPHANUS MULLER
Music’s “non-Political Neutrality”: When race dare not speak its name
STEVEN ROBINS
Spectres of Racial Science at Stellenbosch University: From Eugen Fischer’s Eugenics to the Department of Sport Sciences’ Retracted Article
MOHAMMAD SHABANGU
Education as the Practice of Freedom: Towards a Decolonisation of Desire
CHUMANI MAXWELE
The Solitary Protest That Gave Birth To #RhodesMustFall
SISCA JULIUS
Chappies bubblegum
EMILE YX? JANSEN
Heal the Hood & World with Afrocation
MESULI NALE
Move For Two: Educating for Leadership Through Dance
SARAH MALOTANE HENKEMAN
On the Social Impact of Telling Your Own Story in Your Own Way
ACHMAT DAVIDS
The Social Impact of Language: The "Coloured" Image of Afrikaans in Nineteenth Century Cape Town
JACKIE SHANDU
On the Social Impact of Self Hatred
AZOLA DAYILE
Imbamba – Uthunyiwe: On the Social Impact of Migrant Labour
YAMKELA F. SPENGANE
On the Social Impact of Name Changes
ANELE NZIMANDE
On the Social Impact of Motherhood
ZIYANA LATEGAN
Problems of and for Philosophy
galleri
JOAN OTIENO
Art as the Social Impact of Repurposing Waste Materials
GARTH ERASMUS
Xnau
GARTH ERASMUS
Virulent Strain
ANDREA ROLFES
Not the Paradise Garden
MZOXOLO VIMBA
Sunday best, kakade!
ROCHÉ VAN TIDDENS
Four Compositions
JAMES OATWAY & ALON SKUY
[BR]OTHER
borborygmus
ZIYANA LATEGAN
Invention as Ideological Reproduction
LETTA MBULU
Not Yet Uhuru (Amakhandela)
TUMI MOGOROSI
De
ANDREA LEIGH FARNHAM
A bad relationship with the truth
DAVID MWAMBARI
On the Social Impact of Reading Radical Literature
PHIWOKAZI QOZA
Choreographies of Protest Performance: 2. Somatic Communication and the experience of intensity
DUANE JETHRO
Shangaan Electro: shaping desire @180bpm
CLARE LOVEDAY
WOMEN IN MUSIC.co.za - A website for South African women music practitioners
ERNIE LARSEN
Escape Routes
LIZ SAVAGE
Myanmar: a post-colonial tale of fear, treachery and hope
STEVEN CRAIG HICKMAN
Weird Literature as Speculative Philosophy
frictions
VANGILE GANTSHO
"we have forgotten who we are"
JETHRO LOUW & GARTH ERASMUS
21st Century Khoisan Man
LUCY VALERIE GRAHAM
Seven settler poems
SERGIO HENRY BEN
Some Monday shit.
RIAAN OPPELT
The Boys in the Box
TRICIA WARDEN
Five Poems Two Songs and a Video
JOHAN VAN WYK
Man Bitch
ARI SITAS, GEORGE & DEBBIE MARI
Cold was the ground - A Requiem for Elephants Too**
ARI SITAS, GEORGE & DEBBIE MARI
Cold Was The Ground- A Requiem For Elephants Too* Part I
ARI SITAS, GEORGE & DEBBIE MARI
Cold was the ground - A Requiem for Elephants Too** Part II
claque
JANNOUS NKULULEKO AUKEMA
Something of Inexplicable Value: A Resurrection
FRANK MEINTJIES
From collective to corrective: South African poems of decolonisation
KNEO MOKGOPA
“This Bloodless Wound” - A Review of Kirsty Steinberg’s Confrontation
RONELDA S. KAMFER
Avoiding the obvious routes: Jolyn Phillips deconstructs the legend of Bientang
UNATHI SLASHA
Partaking in the Séance: Preliminary Remarks on Lesego Rampolokeng’s Bird-Monk Seding
WAMUWI MBAO
There are no barbarians: Michel Leiris - more phantom than Africa
ESTHER MARIE PAUW
Jess Auerbach's From Water to Wine: Becoming Middle Class in Angola
MBE MBHELE
Not nearly a review of Ontologicial Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation by Calvin L. Warren
MBALI KGAME
Mphutlane wa Bofelo's Transitions: from Post-Colonial Illusions to Decoloniality What went wrong and what now?
MALAIKA WA AZANIA
Why Do I Scream at God for the Rape of Babies?
TOAST COETZER
Country Conquerors: van blikkiesband tot firebrands – on the Social Impact of Rastafari
GEORGE KING
One Disc, Two Composers, Four Works: When Seven Defines the Music of Friendship
ERNESTO GARCIA MARQUES
Live Jimi Presley: white noise a la Neubauten
ekaya
DEREK DAVEY
Dodging the sjambok
CHRISTINE LUCIA
A Reflection on the Mohapeloa Edition
THEMBELA VOKWANA
Towards a Decolonial South African Musicology: Reflections on Christine Lucia’s Michael Mosoeu Moerane Scholarly Edition.
ANKE FROEHLICH & INGE ENGELBRECHT
Genadendal Music Collections Catalogue: an introduction
off the record
PETER DELPEUT
The Forgotten Evil pilot project digital version
PETER DELPEUT
The Forgotten Evil pilot chapter 5 charisma
PETER DELPEUT
The Forgotten Evil pilot chapter 9 The Forest of Astravas
PETER DELPEUT
The Forgotten Evil, pilot chapter 11 character
LOUIS CHUDE-SOKEI
When Echoes Return: roots, diaspora and possible Africas (a eulogy)
VEIT ERLMANN
The Disappearance of Otherness: ‘Africa Civilised, Africa Uncivilised’: Local Culture, World System and South African Music
IGNATIA MADALANE
From Paul to Penny: The Emergence and Development of Tsonga Disco (1985-1990s)
NIKLAS ZIMMER
Basil Breakey: Jazz contacts, Jazz culture.
OLIVIER LEDURE
Ted Joans
SAM MATHE
NDIKHO DOUGLAS XABA
CAN THEMBA
The Bottom of the Bottle
DANFORD TAFADZWA CHIBVONGODZE
Jonah Sithole’s Sabhuku
feedback
ALEXANDRA DODD
herri: a plenitude of material, ideas, sounds and voices
FACEBOOK FEEDBACK
Social Media Responses to herri issues 1 - 4
the selektah
ZARA JULIUS
A call for renewed internationalism: A sonic liberation front
PhD | Nicola Deane
DECENTERING THE ARCHIVE:
Visual Fabrications of Sonic Memories
NICOLA DEANE
FRAGMENTS By Way of Introduction
NICOLA DEANE
PASSAGE I: SURFACES A Surface Reading of the DOMUS Archive: framing space & time
NICOLA DEANE
PASSAGE II: INVAGINATION A Subjective Fold of the DOMUS Archive: a pocket of one’s own
NICOLA DEANE
PASSAGE III: NOISE A Hauntological Reconstruction of the DOMUS Archive: the noise remains
NICOLA DEANE
PASSAGE IV: THE MASK (De)Scripting the DOMUS Archive as Faceless Protagonist
NICOLA DEANE
ELISABETH UNMASKED by Nicola Deane
NICOLA DEANE
CONCLUSION Irresolution
hotlynx
shopping
SHOP
Purchase or listen
KOLEKA PUTUMA
Black Girl Live
contributors
the back page
MIKE VAN GRAAN
Covid-19 and its Existential Challenge to Theatre
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Archive About Contact Africa Open Institute
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  • off the record

SAM MATHE

NDIKHO DOUGLAS XABA

– b. 22 May 1934 in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. d. 11 June 2019 in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal.

Multi-instrumentalist Ndikho Xaba was a jazzman, composer, pianist, stage performer, percussionist, philosopher, music historian and multi-instrumentalist whose exceptionally spiritual, eclectic, edgy, earthy and groundbreaking music has been described as Afrocentric rhythm. His first public performance was in 1960 in Mkhumbane, a play that relates the cultural vibrancy of a multiracial community in Durban that fell victim to the apartheid bulldozers.

Mkhumbane was written by author Alan Paton, who, incidentally, was also born in Pietermaritzburg. Todd Matshikiza wrote the score of Mkhumbane. Unfortunately, being involved in a “political” play attracted the attention of the apartheid security police. Tired with living as a fugitive in his own country, Xaba eventually chose exile. Ndikho Xaba was playing the part of an imbongi (praise singer) in Paton and Krishna Shah’s Sponono alongside Caiphus Semenya when he left South Africa in 1964.

The play’s US premiere was on 2 April 1964 at the Cort Theatre in Broadway, New York City with a 22-member cast that included Cocky ‘Two-Bull’ Tlhotlhalemaje in the lead role of Sponono – a delinquent schoolboy from a reformatory – as well as Lionel Ngakane, Victor Shange, Philemon Hou and Nomhle Nkonyeni. During its opening a group of American activists picketed against the play. They wrongfully thought it was a pro-apartheid white production with black actors.

But they would later realise that it was a powerful show with performers who were gifted with genuine talent. After its run eleven of the cast members returned home but Xaba and Semenya chose to stay behind. With Miriam Makeba’s assistance and powerful connections they secured scholarships, accommodation and gigs. For the next thirty-four years, Ndikho Xaba lived in the West and Africa as an exile – primarily in the United States, Canada and Tanzania.

As a multi-instrumentalist, Xaba played an array of musical instruments – both indigenous and Western. Most of them were innovative hand-crafted designs that included ancient bow stringed instruments of his ancestors such as umakhweyana and ugubhu as well as wind instruments. In exile, besides sharing the stage with a variety of special acts including Sun Ra, he got involved in the anti-apartheid movement as a political activist, revolutionary musician and educator.

He also closely collaborated with trumpeter Phil Cohran, co-founder of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Founded in 1965 as a non-profit organisation by Chicago-based jazz musicians – pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, pianist Jodie Christian, drummer Steve McCall and Cohran – its purpose was, according to its charter, to ‘perform, nurture and record serious, original music’.

Xaba’s debut self-titled album, Ndikho & The Natives is a landmark work that reflects this philosophy of original performance. It’s also an avant-garde recording that marries the black musical traditions of South Africa and the United States, bringing together the radical Black Power politics of Angela Davis and Stokely Carmichael and the spirit of the anti-apartheid struggles from his homeland.

Photo of Ndikho Xaba courtesy of Xaba Family Archives

As a pianist and composer Xaba’s astute musicianship on this album clearly indicates that he was very much in the same league as illustrious countrymen like Kippie Moeketsi, Hugh Masekela and Abdullah Ibrahim. Based in San Francisco, California, Ndikho Xaba and The Natives were already a household name by 1971. They had performed at historic events such as Free Angela Davis rallies and the Berkeley Jazz Festival alongside illustrious names such as Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. One of their shows in New York included reggae superstars Third World and Toots and the Maytals.

After the Natives broke up in 1971, Xaba performed with his wife, Nomusa Xaba between 1972 and 1986. Billed as The Xaba Duo and Ndikho & Nomusa Xaba, they performed frequently in the US, Canada and Tanzania with Nomusa doing percussion, poetry, vocals and dance. Described on the sleeve notes as ‘an inventive record of exceptional musicianship seeped in the African and spiritual traditions of the jazz avant-garde’, Ndikho’s debut album was re-issued in 2015 by Matsuli Music, a noble initiative that introduced the artist to a new generation of appreciators.

According to the label, the album is ‘arguably the most complete and complex South African jazz LP recorded in the United States’. The author also notes that it’s ‘a recording that stands out as a critical document in the history of transatlantic black solidarity and in the jazz culture of South African exiles.’ It’s also hailed as ‘a critical statement in the history of transatlantic black solidarity, unifying voices stretching from San Francisco to Johannesburg’.

Despite the fact that Xaba is still better known abroad than at home – thanks to many years in exile – his province has made sure that his memory lives on in the form of tribute concerts and accolades. He’s a recipient of the Ethekwini Living Legends (2011) and Mayor’s Award for Excellence/Icons of Democracy (2013), among others. Also worth mentioning is the remarkable tribute album that Mbizo Johnny Dyani and Mongezi Feza recorded in 1972 titled Music For Xaba. A classic.

Buy Ndikho Xaba and the Natives here.

Discography

Ndikho & The Natives (Trilyte, 1970).
Oneness of Juju – African Rhythms Oneness of Juju 1970-1982 (2001). An excellent compilation of deep, African and spiritual funk and jazz.
Spiritual Jazz: Esoteric Modal and Deep Jazz From the Underground 1968-77 (Jazzman Records, 2008). Various Artists.

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