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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
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MOHAMMAD SHABANGU
Monday 20 January 2020
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22 July 2021
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    #07
  • borborygmus

GEORGE LEWIS

Amo (2021), for five voices and electronics

Written for the Neue Vocalsolisten: Johanna Vargas, high soprano; Truike van der Poel, mezzo-soprano; Martin Nagy, tenor; Guillermo Anzorena, baritone; Andreas Fischer, bass.

The 18th century philosopher Anton Wilhelm Amo (c.1703 – c.1759) was brought to Germany as a small child from Axim in present-day Ghana. The noble family Amo served allowed him to be educated, and he completed his law school training at the University of Halle in 1729. After further studies in philosophy, Amo taught at the universities of Wittenberg, Halle and Jena, before returning to Africa around 1750.

The libretto is adapted with permission from translations in Stephen Menn and Justin E. H. Smith, Anton Wilhelm Amo’s Philosophical Dissertations on Mind and Body (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). The primary text is Antonius Guilielmus Amo, 1734, “Disputatio philosophica continens ideam distinctam eorum quae competunt vel menti vel corpori nostro vivo et organico” (Philosophical Disputation Containing a Distinct Idea of Those Things That Pertain Either to the Mind or to Our Living and Organic Body).

The sung texts are in Latin, English, German, Dutch, and Twi, Amo’s native language. Primary translations and examples of written and spoken Twi were provided by Dr. Obenewaa Oduro-Opunim, a native Twi speaker and Assistant Professor in the Department of German Studies, University of Arizona, with additional translations and examples by Kobina Hagan, Ghanaian theatre and film director, actor, writer, new media artist, and researcher on Akan languages, folklore and mythologies. We are grateful for their contributions. 

Amo (2020) Venice Biennale Musicale 2021. BBC Radio 3 New Music Show, broadcast 15 October 2021.

Scene I:  Fanfare
Amo! Amo!
Amo! Amo!
Amo! Amo!

Scene II:  Why?
Anton Wilhelm Amo!
Wie ben jij?
Waar gaan we naartoe?
ɛhen na yɛrekɔ?
ɛyɛ ɛdeɛbɛn “Wolfenbüttel”? 
ɛhen na yɛwɔ seisei yi?
Waar zijn we nu?

Waarom?
Adɛn?
Quare?
Adɛn?  Adɛn?

Scene III: What I can teach
Possum docere
Partes philosophiae elegantioris et curiosae
Elegant and curious philosophy
Physiognomiam
Chiromantiam
Astrologiam mere naturalem
Natural astrology
Artem dechifratoriam
May God turn it to good!

Scene IV: The Nature of Spirit
Omne ens actuosum
Every active entity
in quo datur conscientia sui
illud spiritus est
is a spirit
Spiritus est immaterialis

Scene V: Mind and Body
We sense material things
Homo res materiales sentit
Non quoad mentem
Not with our minds
But with our living organic body
These things are defended against Descartes!
Synonyma non sunt vivere et existere
To live and to exist are not synonyms
Pati et sentire in rebus uiuis synt Synonima
To suffer and to sense are synonymous
Spiritus enim existit, et operatur cum intelligentia.
A spirit exists and operates with understanding

Scene VI:  The Seven Faculties of the Mind
Septem sunt praecipuae mentis facultate
Intellectus       Voluntas
Libertas           Phantasia
Memoria         Habitus
Sentiendi facultas

Intellect pertains to the conscious mind
Intellectus menti vero competit quatenus
ei insunt conscientia
Intellect pertains to the body
to the faculty of sensing
Hanc totam de mente negamus,
corporique damus
We wholly deny this to the mind
and attribute it to the body
contra Cartesium!

Will!
Voluntas de mente praedicari potest,
quoad Conscientia
non quoad instinctum naturalem.
Libertas!
Liberty is the absence of impediment
in the mind’s operation by means of the body.
Ratione mentis libertas
est spontaneitas vel illa faculta
Liberty is spontaneity
Liberty is spontaneity

Phantasia
Imagination
Actus mentis intelligendi momentaneus,
the mind represents something to itself
which is however absent in reality
quod tamen revera absens est

Memoria est
Memoria est
Memoria es
Memoria est
Memoria est
continuata idearum Praesentia
continued presence, in the brai
the mind’s repetitive operation
ex mentis operatione repetitiva
repetitiva
repetitiva
repetitiva

Habit   Habit   Habit
Habit   Habit   Habit
Habit   Habit   Habit

Scene VII:  Epilogue
Ich weiß nicht wie Gott und Geister
jenseits der Materie
sich selbst verstehe
Denn es fehlt Gott und anderen Geisten
Empfindungen
Sinnesorgane
und ein lebendiger und organischer Körper

Daher
God and other spirits beyond matter
understand themselves
without ideas
without sensations
To sense is to suffer
To sense is to suffer

Our mind’s very tight bond
with the body
ob arctissimum cum corpore
uinculum et commercium
Me gyina nsɛm yiso ɛne mo nyinaa ɛredi nkra
[Mit dieser Hypothese verabschiede ich mich von euch allen]
Warum?  Quare?
Magister, warum?
Why, Magister?
Whatever is immutable in man
pertains to the mind
Whatever is mutable with time
pertains to the body

Quod deus bene vertat!
May God turn it to good!

END

Special thanks to Professors Menn (Department of Philosophy, McGill University) and Smith (History and Philosophy, University of Paris 7); Norman Hirschy and Peter Ohlin (senior editors, Music and Philosophy, Oxford University Press); Prof Kira Thurman (Department of Germanic Languages, University of Michigan); Prof Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh (Faculty of Art, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana); and Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (SAVVY Contemporary Berlin). Finally, my very deep gratitude to the Neue Vocalsolisten for their gracious, insightful, and tenacious work on my composition.

This work was completed at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study) in June 2021. It is dedicated to the place where I first conceived it, the Anton Wilhelm Amo Center at SAVVY Contemporary Berlin.

Commissioned by La Biennale di Venezia

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