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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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  • ekaya

INGE ENGELBRECHT

Tribute to Sacks Williams: A composer from Genadendal

The Williams family greets me at the entrance to the Moravian church in Grassy Park. They speak to me as if I am family, a gesture that blesses my sad heart especially because we had never met before this day. I walk inside and I see the (open) coffin to my right at the back of the church for mourners to view “the body”. I don’t know where I expected it to be, but seeing it makes me stop in my tracks for a moment. The moment feels longer than the two seconds it actually takes me to decide whether I should look or not. Why am I even wondering? I never look – it is just too jarring and macabre. I slink past with my gaze deliberately fixed towards the pulpit, making sure I catch no glimpse of anything to my right. I am unexpectedly confronted with a childhood memory of my own great-grandmother’s funeral in Keimoes where, as a five year old, I could see a grey-white strand of hair sticking straight up from inside her coffin. I walk to the middle section of the socially distanced church and slide down past two mourners in the mostly empty pew to the farthest end. The coffin seems so tiny, so tight around Mr Williams’ large statured body, the way I remember him. It makes me angry and sad. Where is the large, regal mahogany casket befitting this enormously respected man? I close my eyes and try to regulate my breathing behind my black mask. I finally open the programme with Mr Williams’s face on the cover and scan through the morning’s proceedings. And then I understand and accept the coffin, and am strangely comforted: Mr Williams is to be cremated.

Mr Sacks Williams at his house in Grassy Park, 2015

I met Mr Sacks Williams in 2013 in the Botanical Gardens in Stellenbosch. He had agreed to be one of the subjects in my master’s research on three composers, including Messrs Dan Apolles and Dan Ulster, who both had strong ties to Genadendal. Mr Williams spoke with conviction and moved with a deliberateness befitting a man who knew who he was and where he came from. He had brought along a few copies of the book he had written about his family’s history and gifted myself and my supervisor at the time, Stephanus Muller, each with a book that he signed on the spot with his own fountain pen which he took from his shirt pocket. He would later in 2017 proudly sign, with that same pen, the inside cover of my completed thesis, which he had paid to be printed and bound for me, himself and Mr Dan Apolles.

Mr Williams’s book on the Weber family and his signature the day we met face to face.

Ezechiel John Whall Williams, affectionately known to his family and friends as “Sacks”, is a descendent of Johann Heinrich Weber (c. 1735-1808) from Honnef, Germany. His great-grandson, Eduard Franz Weber, had become involved with an indigenous girl, Anna Catherina Coerland, and after refusing to break off the relationship, he was disowned by his family. He moved to Genadendal where he would marry Anna in 1834. From this union five children were born in Genadendal, and Sacks Williams is a direct descendant of the third son, Godlof Weber.

Although not born in Genadendal, but in Port Elizabeth, in 1943, Mr Williams was a descendant from the mission station and its music traditions. He trained as a schoolteacher at Bridgeton Training School in Oudtshoorn and specialised as an art teacher at Hewat Training College in Cape Town. For many years, Mr Williams served as the school principal of several schools, after which he was approached by Professor K.T. August to join the lecturing staff of the Heideveld Moravian Theological Seminary, where he lectured in church music and liturgy. Mr Williams retired from teaching in 1993 and resided in Grassy Park with his late wife, Elizabeth, until a few years ago.

Throughout his life Mr Williams had been involved in music activities, serving as choir master, organist, and musical director at his church in Grassy Park, where he also founded a youth brass ensemble. During his years as teacher in Piketberg, Williams regularly organised choir festivals for the surrounding schools and arranged music for his own school’s choir. As local music teacher he trained several choirs and brigades of the Dutch Reformed Church Congregations of Piketberg and Saron for the annual choir competitions, where he also served as accompanist to these choirs. In 1982, Mr Williams was asked by the Provincial Council of the Moravian Church to lead choir workshops, with the focus on church music, at the Shiloh mission station in the Transkei. He was also one of the founding members of the Moravian Choir Union of South Africa (MOCUSA) and served on the board as vice-president until his retirement in 1993.

Although Mr Williams had a rudimentary training in music, receiving piano lessons and basic organ technique as a boy, he never studied music at tertiary level or received formal training in composition. He has, nevertheless, arranged works for instrumental ensembles, set texts to music, and composed original works that have been performed at celebratory festivals by the Moravian church, and has a compositional ouevre of more than 30 works composed over a period of roughly 35 years. As he put it, his sole composition teachers were Bach’s Preludes and Fugues, the second movements of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, and specifically Mozart’s simple and cheerful melodies. Sacks Williams was a religious man and most of his works were written for religious purposes. His composition catalogue consists primarily of church hymns, or tunes, two of which are published in the current Moravian Choral book, namely Psalm 23 and Come let us Sing. Some of his compositions have also been used for specific festivals commemorating the missionary work of the Moravian church.

During my first interview with Mr Williams, I asked him whether he considered himself to be a composer. He appeared to be quite uneasy about claiming this title for himself and deferred to Stephanus Muller, who was present at our first interview, presenting us with his sheet music to assist in the valuation and conclusion. He did, however, position himself more confidently between a “liedjieskrywer” and a composer, but not quite a fully-fledged composer.

Sacks Williams wrote his first composition when his father passed away in 1983. He told me the story of how, when he entered the room where his father’s body lay, he saw an expression of contentment on his father’s face.

Dit is toe ek in die vertrek kom en ek die liggaam van my pa sien lê, na hy skielik gesterf het, en ek toe nou die uitdrukking op sy gesig sien, toe dink ek: maar kyk, as jy dan nou so tevrede kan lyk, nadat jy jou hele lewe lank die Here gedien het, dan is dit mos die moeite werd as jy kan sê ‘die Here is my Herder.’

(Interview extract, 2015)

He set the text of Psalm 23 to music in honour of his father.

First page of Psalm 23 by Sacks Williams.

Mr Williams also set Psalm 116 to music and dedicated this work to his mother, Fredericka, with the caption: Vir Pats (her nickname). According to Mr Williams, Psalm 116 was a favourite Psalm of his mother and she frequently quoted verse 12: “Hoe sal ek die Here vergoed vir al sy weldade aan my?” He set two versions of this text to music. The second version of this setting is my favourite composition by Mr Williams.

Version 2 of the Psalm 116 setting.

Through the years, Mr Williams’s compositions have been performed for different occasions and events, mostly in spiritual settings. In 2018, two of Mr Williams’ choral works were performed by the Stellenbosch University Chamber Choir (SUCC), under the direction of Dr Martin Berger, as part of their repertoire for the annual Woordfees festival in the Endler Hall.

Mr Sacks Williams talking with students from SUCC in the Endler foyer after their Woordfees performance.

And two years earlier on 29 June 2016, Messrs Williams and Apolles performed some of their own compositions in the Fismer Hall of the conservatorium at Stellenbosch University and were recorded for posterity by Aryan Kaganof.

Mr Williams performing one of his compositions in the Fismer Hall. Aryan Kaganof is overseeing the recording.
Sitting at the master’s feet. Mr Williams and I in conversation in between takes on 29 June 2016.
Mr Williams and Mr Dan Apolles sharing a special moment on 29 June 2016.

Although Mr Williams was reluctant to call himself a composer, it is clear that Sacks Williams did indeed have a distinct and absolute idea of who he was as a musician and composer. He had always been unambiguous about why he ultimately composed and arranged music: Soli Deo Gloria. His compositions he considered part of his spiritual life, composed from a place of religious conviction, and solely to honour God. He was insistent that those who perform his works understand the reason for its creation because he composed about eternal, Godly values and things that had meaning to him.

Sacks Williams’ ultimate desire was that his beliefs be reflected in his music, music he considered deeply rooted in a Western tradition and in the musical traditions of Genadendal.

Mr and Mrs Williams at my graduation in March 2017.

In the years after the completion of my master’s thesis, Mr Williams and I remained in contact. Our conversations ranged from my current research and his own new compositions, to his mock concern about why in every social media picture I supposedly post, I always have a glass of wine in my hand, and the sorry state of my love life. We laughed a lot during these conversations, which usually lasted around 20 to 40 minutes. He called me when his wife passed away, and when he was diagnosed with cancer, the latter call coincidentally taking place while I was in Genadendal. On 8 February of this year, we spoke about a possible date for me to visit him. He and his wife had moved in with his eldest son and his family a while ago before Mrs Williams’s passing, and he told me about how grateful he was to his son and daughter-in-law. He asked me to keep his music safe and share it with whomever was interested. But he insisted that I wait until he felt and looked better before we schedule the visit. He was going to call me to set up a date. That was our last conversation.

As the final part to this tribute, I end with an extract from my master’s thesis, a quick exchange that took place between me and Mr Williams the day after the June 2016 recordings in the Fismer Hall. I have chosen this extract as an illustration of, and a glimpse into, the special friendship Mr Sacks Williams and I had, and ultimately, for myself, as a memorial stone of the extraordinary journey we would come to share.

The next morning, I get a call from Mr. Williams, again thanking me for the previous day. The main reason for the call, however, is to ask whether I am satisfied with the recordings. He had realised that he and Mr. Apolles have very different styles and techniques, and he had noticed that his left hand plays slightly before his right hand. He wants to make sure that it is fine with me, but if I am unhappy with the recordings, he will come back and record his pieces again. I assure him that Stephanus and I had noticed that that is the way he plays upon our first visit to his house. I also tell him that we are aware that he performs on both piano and organ and that the mechanisms of these instruments differ, therefore they each need a different technique, and that that could be the contributing factor to this unique style of playing. I reassure him that what he did and how he did it was exactly what we had hoped for and expected of him, nothing more and nothing less. This seems to assuage his concerns, after which the old, jesting fellow I have come to know reappears. He ends our conversation by saying: “Girlie, jy weet nie hoe ’n groot deel van my lewe jy geword het nie.” … I don’t know what to say. Thankfully, he breaks the silence with an uncomfortable joke, to which I laugh, comforted by this familiar jocosity we’ve both become so used to over the past two years.

Ezechiel John Whall “Sacks” Williams (1943-2022)
Gaan wel, Meneer!

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