TENDAYI SITHOLE

Yep, further on…

terror
still things are the same as suffering continues
at this moment as it has always been
black pain is still in this music

joy
the search for the temporal structure of feeling
nothing has been permanent, it is still that moment
black pain is still in this music

fantasy
the creation of the world
escaping from all misery
light reveals the desire i hid in darkness
the beat goes on

change
cosmetic as it is and expecting it to be concrete
all has to be real
the place i am positioned in cannot be mine
the beat goes on

it is still music
things are still the same
it is the music of joy and pain
there is no scale of equation—terror, joy, fantasy and change are still the interlocutors of black pain in its
moment of artistic creation.

History

Folk music is not history
The message of the people
Poets cannot recite
No tongue has diction for this madness

Time in motion while static
Stuck in the present
Its history unfolding
Elusive time outside grasp and clasp

The past faded
It was just phantom
Tales failing to resurrect the dead
Present here is the generation and its truth
Fanonian betrayal can’t capture the explosion and its uncertain time

Folk music documenting pain without writing
The passage narrowing time
No rupture of the glorious past
Legends suffered fatal defeat
Retreat and surrender as dispossession cannibalises

To carry time
With no future and its telos
No possibility of certainties and destination
All fades not hopelessness as hope was not put before the cart
There has not been any desire of the elusive

There is no claim to the glorious past
The contaminated present is the result of this past
No return to any authentic
What is created now is history
History of folk music with no past but the present

Fanon’s civilisation

Fanon’s metaphor
Fanon’s civilisation gone wrong
Ain’t nothing right about civilisation in relation to blacks
Grooving in the heart of empire
Civilisation is the empire
Outside this civilisation is the barbaric; a dark matter outside time
Civilisation as light to defy the abyss

Fanon’s children crying
Césaire unmasked this civilisation as dead and decadent but it still masks itself
Blacks are exiled to this civilisation
The Blue Note and its suture and fracture is no structure
Civilisation and the groove
The packing of bags and leaving
ancestors and their hobo bones in the conquered soil

Civilisation and the destruction of the musical jazz dream
The genius black jazz dying pauperised
Record labels getting fat miau…!!!
Blackness is brutalized because the Boers say “kaffirs can’t play such a civilized music”
Fanon’s children still suffer as they are deemed savages
Fanon having suffered from the The Father who was the Oedipus

The Complex lies elsewhere outside the psychoanalytic schema
It is civilisation that dangles
It is reachable but cannot be reached
The Complex is Fanon
The complex as the metaphor of civilisation
Fanon’s touch of civilisation

Dyani’s touch of civilisation
Touching will be a dream under apartheid if not a fugitive thing
No touching would occur under the Immorality Act
Psycho-sexual fears raised—“no to our possessions”
No Blacks!!!

Fanon’s touch Dyani’s touch
Touching civilisation
The touch in exile
The native in exile
Exiled
“Mama, look a Negro”
Still in civilisation and yet not being civilised as touching is not civilisation does not civilise
Still black and savage

Fanon’s touch Dyani’s touching of the white breast is not civilisation
Fanon’s civilisation does not pass the allegory test
There is no white civilisation
Touching the white breast is not touching civilisation
Fanon’s touch and Dyani’s touch Ain’t no touch of civilisation

One for Biko wa Azania

one tribute
            one song
                        one song for biko
                                                one quartet
one johnny dyani
            one don cherry
                        one dudu pukwana
                                                one makaya ntshoko
one love
   one music
                                one biko
                                                 one Azania

Footnoting schizophrenia

what is not in the main text?
imbizo is not in the main text
not written and yet so visible

alternative traces of folk music
nullified meta-sonic structures
rendering unsound of the voice of the dead poet
grand explorations and meta-narratives brought down

the epic destabilised not to have any episodic continuity
starting all over again, claiming no glory as there has never been sainthood
there is nothing to glorify either

Africa is lost
The mist of exile is so thick
nothing is within reach
the false connection even frustrates the music
no beautiful Africa in this loss
the loss of neo-colonisation

the text testifying the testimony of terror
how mad is to be in madness
the noise that deafens the flesh of the pounding heart
nothing to reach for the wretched souls stripped of their riches

no musical note can be coherence of the beauty of Africa
looking within the dark matter the Conradian Heart of Darkness
Mda’s Heart of Redness cannot testify to the spilled blood
Darkness and Redness as matter of the heart with love lost
painting the colors to the void
still no reach and no sight of African beauty and its mystified proportions
nostalgic claim as black is erased now

the epic falls just like Rhodes’ spirit hasn’t fallen
shackles of neo-colonial rule soiling and leaving that stench that can’t be perfumed

no safe haven for Africa’s glory
it is blown and its kak hits the fan on its no. 3 button mode
no place to hide
it is still Fela’s expensive kak with no price tag on it
kak ain’t no value—excremental relegation to nothingness

going back to Africa as going back
at odds with the affirmative as reality is exhausted
legends obliterated
myths mute
Negritude cannot even save the day

the music that breaks down without any nervous break-down
the communion of madness is called
coming together as mad for what is yet to come
the music brought that future
fragments so fragile
sweet dreams in nightmares

musical break down through improvisationary building
building the broken and breaking the building
everything in its original sense—the abyss
madness as the solo becomes the dark matter turned blue
there is no text to read
the solo is mad writing on air
if the writing is on the wall its footnotes are live on air

Papa Mingus Jazz Workshop

this is no still but a fluid jam
jam session in motion
philosophy without sophistry
creativity simply simple

                        the complicated jam session sounding simple
                        the making of the simple as the unmaking of the complicated
                        making and unmaking
                        simple and complicate

where is all this mechanical stuff being done?
come to the Papa Mingus Jazz Workshop
jazz by the ear and jazz by writing made simple
text-music dialectic without synthesis
the conceptual non-conceptual
it is as simple as that in the jam session

                                    jamming to pronounce Pithecanthropus Erectus made simple
                                    the start of swing mode
                                    low and high registers in one
                                    pressing on steam ahead with unexpected sounds
                                    piercing abrasively and shrieking expressively
                                    instrumental apparatus unlocked
                                    simple as that complicated sound
jazz poems complicated in simple sophistications
radical poetics in simple complication
jamming still?
not that simple
pontificating the point poignantly
making a point
making a complicated point to point simply

                                    simply joined at the hip so sound “hip”
                                    jazz and radical poetry into one
                                    beat poetry
                                    conversation of narration
                                    jam sessions of live gigs and sonic record
                                    the jam session is a place to be even if the sonic record is there
                                    simply joint to improvise

       in the jazz session the beat goes on
       when the going gets tough made simple
       where is that Haitian Fight Song?
       voodoo voodoo jam session
       hymn of freedom in Papa Mingus Jazz Workshop
       no writing of stillness in the jam session

Blue notes for Papa Ramps

Take that bass Dyani and play it for Papa Ramps
The amplified sound from that Rotel amp ranting the electrified sound
Make his ass jive that rebellious poetic lyricism
Yah basta!!!! Some Jive Ass Boer vibration for the poet
The poet who licks no ass, even the black one that calls to be kissed
Make his tongue much sharper
His words must not cut throats but must decapitate heads off

Lies excavated deeper more than the miners can go
The rant echoing in dark shafts that smell the sweat and blood of miners
Speaking no truth to power but the truth that wrecks any lie

Papa Ramps rants rating the rate of rot
Rapacious rhetoric rife
Fela’s Roforofo uprooting the rot

The reign of rhyme by blackness
Refusing the rhyme without reason
Refusing reason that rhymes
Yah basta!!!! Nowhere to hide as Bantu Ghost haunts in that blue stage

Bavino’s notes not nodding
Slave ranting
Retired slave
Declares the chest of the poetic shaman who is
Blasphemous to lies and sacred to truth as Witchdoctors Son word

Take that bass Dyani and hit that high and low blue notes that are audible to the deaf and the dead
The rhythm that makes bones dance in graves
The poet who refuses to be heard is here
His refusal to entertain is his freedom
He can’t be bought and pimped
The agenda will not change as he reads burning scripts

Bass and poetry in rebellion
Comfort of complicity and culpability in Camus NO
Poetic justice is Camus YES
The poet who refuses to speak but chants
The poet who rebels
The poet who haunts

The canon of the bass
The canon of poetry
All in simple truth and saying it
The canon of the underground and the underdog
Those who live in the blues know darkness and its truth

Poetic lyricism that does not mourn death but celebrates it
No fear no favour
Papa Ramps coming for everything
Everything is occupied in Azania
Tongues are bought to sing poems of praise
No to imbongis in this occupied wretched land where there are no praises worthy to be sung

All is blue and ugly
All is blue and beautiful
Come to Bavino’s cathedral and hear Dyani’s bass
Musical structures turned artistic work
Experimentation of sunshine at night
Night in blue for Papa Ramps who wishes you sunshine