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6
Contents
editorial
KEVIN DAVIDSON
“Soulbrother #1”
TESHOME GABRIEL
Ruin and The Other: Towards a Language Of Memory
MLADEN DOLAR
Singing in Pursuit of the Object Voice
Theme Graham Newcater
STEPHANUS MULLER
Sapphires and serpents: In Search of Graham Newcater
ARYAN KAGANOF
Of Fictalopes and Jictology (2018)
MEGAN-GEOFFREY PRINS
Toccata for Piano (2012): The gift of newness
OLGA LEONARD
The Leonard Street Meetings (2008-2012)
ARYAN KAGANOF
Her first concert - 15 October 2011
STEPHANUS MULLER & GRAHAM NEWCATER
Interview (2008, transcribed 2010)
AMORÉ STEYN
The Properties of the Raka Tone Row as seen within the Context of other Newcaterian Rows
STEPHANUS MULLER
The Island
GRAHAM NEWCATER
CONCERTO in E Minor Op. 5 (1958)
ARNOLD VAN WYK
A Letter from Upper Orange Street, 14th June 1958
GRAHAM NEWCATER
Concert Overture Op. 8 (1962-3)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
Variations For Orchestra Op 11 (1963)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
Nr.1 Klange An Thalia Myers (1964)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
Allegretto e Espressivo (1966)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
Variations de Timbres (1967)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
String Quartet (1983/4)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
Songs of the Inner Worlds (1991)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
ETUDE I For Horn with Piano Accompaniment (2012)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
ETUDE II For Horn with Piano Accompaniment (2012)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
SONATINA for Pianoforte (2014)
GRAHAM NEWCATER
CANTO for Pianoforte (2015)
LIZABÉ LAMBRECHTS
The DOMUS Graham Newcater Collection Catalogue
galleri
TAFADZWA MICHAEL MASUDI
Waiting For A Better Tomorrow
ILZE WOLFF
Summer Flowers
NIKKI FRANKLIN
Sans Visage
BAMBATHA JONES
Below the Breadline
TRACY PAYNE
Veiled
STAN ENGELBRECHT
Miss Beautiful
ALEKSANDAR JEVTIĆ
We Are The Colour of Magnets and also Their Doing
GRAHAM NEWCATER
Augenmusik & Some Tarot Cards
EUGENE SKEEF
Monti wa Marumo!
borborygmus
PASCALE OBOLO
Electronic Protest Song As Resistance Through the Creation of Sound
AXMED MAXAMED & MATHYS RENNELA
A Conversation on the Bleaching of Techno: How Appropriation is Normalized and Preserved
FANA MOKOENA
A problem of classification
PHIWOKAZI QOZA
Choreographies of Protest Performance:
MASIXOLE MLANDU
On Fatherhood in South Africa
VULANE MTHEMBU
We are ancestors in our lifetime – AI and African data
TIMBAH
All My Homies Hate Skrillex – a story about what happened with dubstep
TETA DIANA
Three Sublime Songs
LAWRENCE KRAMER
Circle Songs
NEIL TENNANT
Euphoria?
frictions
LYNTHIA JULIUS
Vyf uit die Kroes
NGOMA HILL
This Poem Is Free
MSIZI MOSHOETSI
Five Poems
ABIGAIL GEORGE
Another Green World
OMOSEYE BOLAJI
People of the Townships
RIAAN OPPELT
The Escape
DIANA FERRUS
Daai Sak
KUMKANI MTENGWANA
Two Poems
VADIM FILATOV
Azsacra: Nihilism of Dancing Comets, The Destroyer of the Destroyers
claque
ZAKES MDA
Culture And Liberation Struggle In South Africa: From Colonialism To Apartheid (Edited By Lebogang Lance Nawa)
MPHUTHUMI NTABENI
The Promise of genuine literary stylistic innovation
ZUKISWA WANNER
[BR]OTHER – Coffee table snuff porn, or...?
SEAN JACOBS
Davy Samaai The People's Champion
KNEO MOKGOPA
I Still See The Sun/ The Dukkha Economy
CHRISTINE LUCIA
Resonant Politics, Opera and Music Theatre out of Africa
ARI SITAS
The Muller’s Parable
ZIMASA MPEMNYAMA
CULTURE Review: The Lives of Black Folk
RIAAN OPPELT
Club Ded: psychedelic noir in Cape Town
DYLAN VALLEY
Nonfiction not non-fiction (not yet)
DEON MAAS
MUTANT - a crucial documentary film by Nthato Mokgata and Lebogang Rasethaba
GEORGE KING
Unknown, Unclaimed, and Unloved: Rehabilitating the Music of Arnold Van Wyk
THOMAS ROME
African Art As Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson, And The Idea Of Negritude. By Souleymane Bachir Diagne.
SIMBARASHE NYATSANZA
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: Making Africa visible in an upside-down World
ekaya
BRIDGET RENNIE-SALONEN & YVETTE HARDIE
Creating a healthy arts sector ecosystem: The Charter of Rights for South African Artists
KOPANO RATELE
What Use Would White Students Have For African Psychology?
NICKI PRIEM
The Hidden Years of South African Music
INGE ENGELBRECHT
“Die Kneg” – pastor Simon Seekoei in conversation.
SCORE-MAKERS
Score-making
off the record
BARBARA BOSWELL
Writing as Activism: A History of Black South African Women’s Writing
MPHUTLANE WA BOFELO
MUSIC AS THE GOSPEL OF LIBERATION: Religio-Spiritual Symbolism and Invocation of Martyrs of Black Consciousness in the Azanian Freedom Songs
IGNATIA MADALANE
From Paul to Penny: The Emergence and Development of Tsonga Disco (1985-1990s) Pt.2
ADAM GLASSER
In Search of Mr. Paljas
TREVOR STEELE TAYLOR
Censorship, Film Festivals and the Temperature at which Artworks and their Creators Burn
PATRIC TARIQ MELLET
The Camissa Museum – A Decolonial Camissa African Centre of Memory and Understanding @ The Castle of Good Hope
IKERAAM KORANA
The Episteme of the Elders
OLU OGUIBE
Fela Kuti
MICHAEL TAUSSIG
Walter Benjamin’s Grave
ANTHONY BURGESS
On the voice of Joyce
feedback
FRÉDÉRIC SALLES
This is not a burial, it’s a resurrection : Cinema without the weight of perfection.
FACEBOOK FEEDBACK
Social Media Responses to herri 5
the selektah
boeta gee
Hoor Hoe Lekker Slat’ie Goema - (An ode to the spirit of the drum)
PhD
MARY RÖRICH
Graham Newcater's Orchestral Works: Case Studies in the Analysis of Twelve-Tone Music
hotlynx
shopping
contributors
the back page
DANIEL MARTIN
Stuttering From The Anus
© 2024
Archive About Contact Africa Open Institute
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    #06
  • galleri

STAN ENGELBRECHT

Miss Beautiful

These photos are taken from Miss Beautiful, a book project that documented the crowning of over thirty-two beauty pageant winners around 2008. The texts are written by Tamsyn de Beer

Miss Gay Disco Queen

Chedino Rodriguez, 1st Runner-up

The MC introduces Chedino to a captive Bonteheuwel audience as the ‘future mayor’ of Cape Town. ‘Once I had this question at a competition,’ says Chedino, ‘they asked me: “Who is your favourite gay person, and why?” I don’t have a favourite gay person … my favourite gay person is all of those gays who had the courage to come out of the closet and be true to themselves in being whom and what they are. Because, depriving yourself of that, what’s it doing to you at the end of the day? Most gays commit suicide. Why? Because they cannot be who they want to be, thanks to society. There is nothing I want to change about myself. The reason is that in order for my community to accept me for the gay person that I am, I must first and foremost accept myself as I am.’

Tonight, Chedino tells her captive audience that she comes from Heideveld, a ‘small and homophobic’ part of the sprawling Cape Flats. When she strides back to the line of queens with a swing of her sleek black wig, she is well over six feet in stiletto heels. ‘Partially, I do say that I am a woman in a man’s body. Even my mother told me once that when she was carrying me, she was hoping it was going to be a girl. She got what she wanted!’

Mr HIV/Aids-Awareness

Sam Manganye

‘Winning Mr HIV/Aids-Awareness was the best thing that’s ever happened to me … because it’s good to win something; good to be a winner … I feel like a hero. I feel like a president. I feel like I can control everyone. I feel like a giant. And everyone was checking me up and down, hugging me, kissing me – even my competitors, they were so happy for me … it was so good ….’

‘My age-group, they are so ignorant – in the sense that they kill themselves. They like fast lives … they like to imitate other people. And they like to compromise their values, their dignity, where they’re coming from – because of peer pressure… I’m an eyewitness, and it’s so embarrassing and so bad. I don’t want to lie … Teenagers, they are not abstaining, they are not … I cannot understand the main reason, but I think it’s this generation – there’s something wrong. It’s pressure. Those who are educated and those who are illiterate, when they get money it’s one thing: party.’

Miss Face of Gauteng

Nyameka Ntaba

‘When you see yourself in the newspaper, you see yourself as a different person. You say: “I never knew I was this beautiful!”’

‘I told myself that if I win and manage to get paid, I’m going to buy my own dress. Because every time I always have to borrow a dress, and sometimes they turn you down and say: “Why don’t you have your own dress?” I cannot explain that I have to borrow a dress because I am desperate. You have to accept the life that you live; that is what my grandma always told me. That is why I am who I am; because I accepted the life that I live. Sometimes there is no food to eat, but I wouldn’t go out and sell myself. I wouldn’t do that. I’ve got what it takes. I believe in myself,’ says Nyameka

Mr Dare

Michael ‘Shakes’ Pluck

‘The life that I’ve led wasn’t that good – but I enjoyed myself. Bikes showed me a part of my life, something to live for… There is that bit of freedom that you can get … there’s no restrictions. With a helmet on, nobody can recognise you. It’s another zone. It’s a whole different feeling. I was the only poephol that took his clothes off; running around in my g-string – that was Mr Dare!’ For his efforts, Michael receives a plastic crown, a bottle of Amarula, a bottle of wine, a keyring. ‘I’m in lots of fights. You must see what my hands look like for fighting. These days you get locked up for anything – but I like to fight; I enjoy that. I get a kind of sick satisfaction out of it. These guys in Upington, they push. We kick the shit out of each other … I like adrenaline, I enjoy it…’

Oswenka winner

Jotham Dlomgolo

‘We started this thing many years ago … The swankers were born to the scathamiya groups, because we used to sing at night. Now, when it’s 12 o’clock, we weren’t allowed to go in the street, because at that time … apartheid … we needed passes or permission. We wouldn’t walk in the street … because the police can arrest you. So that’s why we started swanking when we finished singing…’

The scathamiya, traditional Zulu a cappella choir groups, draw from a spiritual mix of Zulu culture and Zionism to recount moral fables and life-lessons through vocal harmony and dance. It was some 60 years ago that the oswenka competitions sprung up from the singing competitions that took place among mainly Zulu mine workers in Johannesburg hostels. The donning of suits and finery amongst these working class men was a form of defiance then. But today, the swankers are the epitome of gentlemanly conduct and old-fashioned values, modelling themselves on the virtues of cleanliness, self-respect, sobriety, good behaviour, style. If you saw Jotham Dlomgomo on the streets of Johannesburg, you would know him for what he is: a worker; a migrant labourer. But Jotham cultivates another image: ‘I am a gentleman.’

Mr Gay Sobantu

Nelisiwe ‘Junior’ Mbatha

‘I wish my parents would accept me one day.’

The Kismet Hotel is a faded seventies-glam establishment in the Indian part of downtown Pietermaritzburg. The Gay Sobantu pageant came to the Kismet after neighbouring Sobantu township (the place that lent the occasion its name and for whose gay youths the event was intended) proved too dangerous a location for gay boys to go dragging or lesbian girls to save themselves from a beating. To appease her parents, Junior wears a skirt once a week to church on a Sunday morning. The rest of the time, she wears androgynous sports clothing or men’s casual wear, because this is what makes her feel comfortable. It’s hard to miss her confident strut, her boyish gait, her challenging gaze. It’s the kind of look and attitude that can get a girl into trouble. Like the time Junior’s girlfriend was beaten up in front of her by a group of young men who derided the two shouting: ‘Istabane … istabane.’ It’s the same word that she and her girlfriend hear at the taxi ranks; the same word that they did not want to hear from the local police officers, and so did not report the incident. Istabane is the word that most offends Junior; a word best translated from the Zulu as ‘hermaphrodite’.

Junior came to the Kismet tonight to show off her true self. The fire inside her that makes Junior beautiful, confident, true, was rewarded by a panel of judges and a roomful of peers. Junior walks her truth on the streets every day – so if she chooses to hide her satin sash, then that is her right. ‘When I won, I felt very happy – but I was scared of the guy from The Mirror newspaper because he was going to put me in the paper and my parents would see.’ – Mr Gay Sobantu, Junior Mbatha

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Archive About Contact Africa Open Institute