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Issue #07
Contents
editorial
DJO BANKUNA
Pissing On The Rainbow Nation
NATHAN TRANTRAAL
Ôs haatie wit mense nie. Hoekô haat julle vi ôs?
GLENN HOLTZMAN
The Music Department in South Africa as a Mirror of Racial Tension and Transformative Struggle: A Critical Ethnographic Perspective
TENDAYI SITHOLE
Black artists and the paradox of the gift
Theme Johnny Mbizo Dyani
ZWELEDINGA PALLO JORDAN
JOHNNY DYANI: A Portrait
JOHNNY MBIZO DYANI
A Letter From Mbizo
ARYAN KAGANOF
Johnny Dyani Interview 22-23 December 1985
SALIM WASHINGTON
“Don’t Sell Out”
LOUIS MOHOLO-MOHOLO & HERBIE TSOAELI WITH JOHNNY DYANI
In Conversation with Mbizo
ZOLISWA FIKELEPI-TWANI & NDUDUZO MAKHATHINI
When Today Becomes The Past: The Archive as a Healing Process
ASHER GAMEDZE
Tradition as improvisation | Continuity and abstraction
GILBERT MATTHEWS & LEFIFI TLADI
An Interview with Lars Rasmussen
EUGENE SKEEF
The Musical Confluence of Johnny Dyani and Bheki Mseleku in Exile
TENDAYI SITHOLE
Blue Scripts For Johnny Mbizo Dyani - Script i: The Figure
TENDAYI SITHOLE
Blue Scripts For Johnny Mbizo Dyani - Script ii: Ontology Of The Bass
TENDAYI SITHOLE
Blue Scripts For Johnny Mbizo Dyani - Script iii: Musical Offering
TENDAYI SITHOLE
Blue Scripts For Johnny Mbizo Dyani - Script iv: Home And Exile
TENDAYI SITHOLE
Blue Scripts For Johnny Mbizo Dyani - Script v: Experimental Philosophic Incantations
TENDAYI SITHOLE
Blue Scripts For Johnny Mbizo Dyani - Script vi: The Posthumous Life
ED EPSTEIN
Spiritual
CAROL MULLER
Diasporic musical landscapes: Abdullah Ibrahim, Johnny Dyani, and Sathima Bea Benjamin in an African Space Program (1969-1980)
BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH
Riot in Progress (Legalize Freedom)
S’MAKUHLE BOKWE MAFUNA
Notes on the Exile Years
KEI MURRAY MONGEZI PROSPER MCGREGOR
Who the Son was?
ARYAN KAGANOF
Somebody Blew Up South Africa
JONATHAN EATO
Interludes with Bra’ Tete Mbambisa
MAX ANNAS
Morduntersuchungskommission. Der Fall Daniela Nitschke
SHANE COOPER
Lonely Flower
THANDI ALLIN DYANI
"I love you. You don’t have to love me but I love you."
galleri
SLOVO MAMPHAGA
Shades of Johnny Dyani
HUGH MDLALOSE
Jazz is my Life
TJOBOLO KHAHLISO
Shebeening
FEDERICO FEDERICI
Notes (not only) on asemic phenomenology
ANDRÉ CLEMENTS
Vita-Socio-Anarcho
DEREK DAVEY
Verge
borborygmus
MUSTAPHA JINADU
Trapped
VUSUMZI MOYO
From Cape-to-Cairo – AZANIA
MALAIKA WA AZANIA
In a foreign tongue...
SHARLENE KHAN
Imagining an African Feminist Press
DILIP MENON
Isithunguthu (A conversation in Joburg)
CATHERINE RUDENT
Against the “Grain of the Voice” - Studying the voice in songs
GEORGE LEWIS
Amo (2021), for five voices and electronics
STEVEN SHAVIRO
Exceeding Syncopation?
BRUCE LABRUCE
Notes on camp/anti-camp
PATRICIA PISTERS
Set and Setting of the Brain on Hallucinogen: Psychedelic Revival in the Acid Western
frictions
KHADIJA TRACEY HEEGER
Doctor Patient
KNEO MOKGOPA
Vuleka Mhlaba (What Would Happen if Madiba Returned?)
CHURCHIL NAUDE
Die mooi mooi gedig en anner massekinners ….
OSWALD KUCHERERA
Travelling on the Khayelitsha Train
SISCA JULIUS
Islands in the stream
FAEEZ VAN DOORSEN
Nobody’s Mullet
GADDAFI MAKHOSANDILE
The Face of Hope
VONANI BILA
Extracts from Phosakufa (the epic)
NIQ MHLONGO
Mistaken Identity
OMOSEYE BOLAJI
People of the Townships part 2
SIMBARASHE NYATSANZA
How to Become an African President
JEAN RHYS
The Doll
OSCAR HEMER
Coyote
MICHALIS PICHLER
Bibliophagia
claque
LINDELWA DALAMBA
From Kippie to Kippies and Beyond: the village welcomes this child
GWEN ANSELL
Zim Ngqawana: A child of the rain
MKHULULI
Black Noise: Notes on a Semanalysis of Mogorosi’s DeAesthetic
LIZE VAN ROBBROECK
DECOLONIZING ART BOOK FAIRS: Publishing Practices from the South(s).
DYLAN VALLEY
The Future lies with folk art: Max Schleser’s smartphone filmmaking THEORY AND PRACTICE
PAUL KHAHLISO
Riding Ruins
DIANA FERRUS
Ronelda Kamfer’s Kompoun: unapologetic and honest writing.
UNATHI SLASHA
Piecing Together the Barely Exquisite Corpse: On Tinashe Mushakavanhu’s Reincarnating Marechera: Notes on the Speculative Archive
WANELISA XABA
One from the heart: Dimakatso Sedite's Yellow Shade
BLAQ PEARL (JANINE VAN ROOY-OVERMEYER)
Uit die Kroes: gedigte deur Lynthia Julius
FRANK MEINTJIES
Wild Has Roots: thinking about what it means to be human
MPHUTHUMI NTABENI
The Land Wars: The Dispossession of the Khoisan and AmaXhosa in the Cape Colony - a discourse on the unrelenting and ruthless process of colonial conquest
ekaya
MKHULU MNGOMEZULU
Call Me By My Name: Ubizo and Ancestral Names for Abangoma
HILDE ROOS
In Conversation with Zakes Mda: "The full story must be told."
INGE ENGELBRECHT
Tribute to Sacks Williams: A composer from Genadendal
ESTHER MARIE PAUW
A tribute to Hilton Biscombe
WILLEMIEN FRONEMAN
Resisting the Siren Song of Race
off the record
SANDILE MEMELA
Things My Father Taught Me
HEIDI GRUNEBAUM
On returning to my grandmother’s land (notes for a film)
HILTON BISCOMBE
A boytjie from Stellenbosch
KHOLEKA SHANGE
Art, Archives, Anthropology
RITHULI ORLEYN
On Archives, Metadata and Aesthetics
KEYAN G. TOMASELLI
The Nomadic Mind of Teshome Gabriel: Hybridity, Identity and Diaspora
FINN DANIELS-YEOMAN & DARA WALDRON
Song For Hector - the utopian promise of the archive
TREVOR STEELE TAYLOR
Censorship, Film Festivals and the Temperature at which Artworks and their Creators Burn - episode 2
GEORGE KING
Sustaining an Imagined Culture: Some Reflections on South African Music Research in Thirty-Five Years of Ars Nova
RAFI ALIYA CROCKETT
Loxion Fabulous: Temporality and Spaciality in South African Kwaito Performance
feedback
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MOHAMMAD SHABANGU
Monday 20 January 2020
ANDILE KHUMALO
22 July 2021
STEPHANIE VOS
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RAMPOLOKENG, MUYANGA, OOSTERLING, VD BRINK, GRUNEBAUM & KAGANOF
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    #07
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BLAQ PEARL (JANINE VAN ROOY-OVERMEYER)

Uit die Kroes: gedigte deur Lynthia Julius

Watter kwaai boek! Ek salute die skrywer! Ń boek wat ek appreciate in my collection en weer sal lees.

With the onset of my reading the book I instantly felt the heart of the writer.

Throughout the book there are so many different themes and issues coming through, such as various forms of abuse, community, suicide, social ills and family relationships. I wish more people would read this book because there’s so much urgently needed honesty and reality being shared here.

I imagine the writer being a rebel at times yet just an ordinary person going through life’s stuff at other times.

Lynthia is bold, grof en unapologetic.

I am grateful for her sharing her poetry with us.

Now let’s break it down; as a poet, writer and cultural activist myself, I appreciate Lynthia Julius’ writing, her content, her style. I can relate to so much in these pages. I respect the writer so much. I think people who read this book will be inspired and informed.

I am intrigued by the titles of the poems that don’t immediately give me direct access to the content. So I realise while reading a few poems that I must accept that and just keep an open mind. Some of these titles are Halfnaatjie, Loslating, Luna, Vir Al Jarreau, Daai Sabbat to name a few.

The themes are thought provoking; like Lynthia’s views of religion as well as love and romantic relationships plus her lucid writing about sex.

There are so many different issues coming through that I was very overwhelmed at times. I realised it’s not a book I can or want to read in one go, but over time. I needed to take a break now and then because my emotions were shook up and deeply affected. I think this kind of poetry should be more accessible to our communities and people who also go through what Lynthia Julius goes through.

Issues such as rape, violence, racism, segregation, cycles of pain continuing through generations and loss can be found in titles such as Kleur kom tog alleen, Krismisboom, en Die vrouens in my familie.

Hierdie boek is vir enige iemand om te lees! I can be my intellectual and creative self while reading this book. I like Lynthia’s content, her emotions coming through when I read. I notice her style doesn’t conform to your “typical” or popular poetry. For example, in the poem Die huis, about a man, his body and Ma’t gesê about a woman, her body. I’m also referring to the way Lynthia Julius puts the words and poems all together and leaves out comma’s, full stops and exclamation marks. So I love her uniqueness and absolute freedom of expression.

I am also challenged with certain words that I had to read again and again to understand because of the different type of Afrikaans we speak and the demographics reflecting where we come from. Some words that stand out in this regard are

Aksynbetalers,
Sneeubruintjie,
neerhalings,
gravitasiekolke,
pram.

I must admit the word pram isn’t a word in my vocabulary and after reading it first without understanding the content of the poem I then figured it out but felt a bit silly. Of course I appreciate her language very much.

The use of Skuld in the poem, and the poem titled Ma’s ń huis is direct and not used as a metaphor. This also seems to be a trend in Lynthia’s poems.

While reading one can visualise the situations you read about. It’s so graphic and animated that you can imagine being there through the different poems and in a way experience the stories with the writer. Drie van die poems in particular that have this graphic quality are Beautiful in Kakamas, Die vrouens in my familie en Lisa. Naturally relate en love ek ook die poem titled Kroes:

ek was te kroes om ’n Kimberley Coloured te wees
te glad om opreg Khoi te wees
te gemeng om wit te wees

ek het uit die as opgestaan met my kroes hare, Mamma
sukkel-sukkel die krulnukke in my hare uitgekam
en met die loskomsels op die kam besef:

fok glad wees
laat sy ring maar in my hare verstrik raak
ek vee nie my geskiedenis uit my hare uit nie
kroes is kroes

In honour I want to say this: Lynthia jy is ń befokte (amazing) mens! Jou boek is kwaai! Kap an! Ek is bly ek kon jou meet somehow deur jou skrywery, jou gedigte, jou stories! Kei Gangans! Dankie!

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Archive About Contact Africa Open Institute