• Issue #01
  • Issue #02
  • Issue #03
  • Issue #04
  • Issue #05
  • Issue #06
  • Issue #07
  • Issue #08
  • Issue #09
  • Issue #10
9
Contents
editorial
DON LETTS & SINÉAD O’CONNOR
Trouble of the World
MOEMEDI KEPADISA
A useful study in Democracy
FRED HO
Why Music Must Be Revolutionary – and How It Can Be
LOUIS CHUDE-SOKEI
Walking With Sound: Race and the Prosthetic Ear
Theme Lefifi Tladi
NUNU NGEMA
A Portrait of Ntate Lefifi Victor Tladi
MASELLO MOTANA
Tladi Lefifing!
SHEBA LO
Munti wa Marumo (Return to the source): Lefifi Tladi’s Cultural Contributions to the Struggle 1970-1980
SHANNEN HILL
CREATING CONSCIOUSNESS - Black Art in 1970s South Africa
EUGENE SKEEF
Convergence at the OASIS
LEFIFI TLADI
One More Poem For Brother Dudu Pukwana
DAVE MARKS
Liner Notes
PONE MASHIANGWAKO
My Journey with Mammoths: Motlhabane Mashiangwako and Lefifi Tladi.
GEOFF MPHAKATI & ARYAN KAGANOF
Giant Steps
ES’KIA MPHAHLELE
Renaming South Africa
LERATORATO KUZWAYO
Boitemogelo - Definitions of consciousness draped in Blackness
BRIDGET THOMPSON
Piecing Together Our Humanity and Consciousness, Through Art, Life and Nature: Some thoughts about friendship with the artist, musician and wordsmith: Lefifi Tladi
LEFIFI TLADI with REZA KHOTA & HLUBI VAKALISA
Water Diviner
PALESA MOKWENA
Bra Si and Bra Victor: The Black Consciousness Artists Motlhabane Mashiangwako & Lefifi Tladi
FRÉDÉRIC IRIARTE
Proverbs
ARYAN KAGANOF
Lefifi Tladi – The Score
DAVID LOCKE
Simultaneous Multidimensionality in African Music: Musical Cubism
MORRIS LEGOABE
A Portrait of Motlhabane Simon Mashiangwako, Mamelodi, 1978
ZIM NGQAWANA & LEFIFI TLADI
Duet of the Seraphim
PERFECT HLONGWANE
Voices in the Wilderness: A Trans-Atlantic Conversation with LEFIFI TLADI
LEFIFI TLADI with JOHNNY MBIZO DYANI & THABO MASHISHI
Toro for Bra Geoff
LEKGETHO JAMES MAKOLA
Facebook Post May 24 2023
KOLODI SENONG
Darkness After Light: Portraits of Lefifi Tladi
LEFIFI TLADI
The African Isness of Colour
EUGENE SKEEF
A Portrait of Lefifi Tladi, an Alchemist Illuminating Consciousness, London, 1980s.
galleri
BELKIS AYÓN
intitulada
LIZE VAN ROBBROECK & STELLA VILJOEN
Corpus of Ecstasy: Zanele Muholi at Southern Guild
BADABEAM BADABOOM
Excerpts from the genius cult book of black arts
PETKO IORDANOV
African Wedding (super8mm 9fps)
ANTHONY MUISYO
folk tales and traditions, the algorithm, ancient history and the city of Nairobi
NHLANHLA DHLAMINI
How to Fight the Robot Army and Win?
DZATA: THE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS
A Repository of Thought
borborygmus
AMOGELANG MALEDU
Colonial collections as archival remnants of reclamation and (re)appropriation: reimagining the silenced Isigubu through Gqom
MALAIKA MAHLATSI
Townships were never designed for family recreation
BONGANI TAU
Can I get a witness: sense-less obsessions, brandism, and boundaries by design
SALIM WASHINGTON
The Unveiling
DYLAN VALLEY
Benjamin Jephta: “Born Coloured, Not Born Free”
EUGENE THACKER
Song of Sorrow
STANLEY ELKIN
The Flamenco Dancer
KEVIN BISMARK COBHAM
Plasticizing Frantz and Malcolm. Ventriloquism. Instrumentalization.
ARTURO DESIMONE
What the Devil do they Mean When they Say “Crystal Clear?’’
frictions
DIANA FERRUS
My naam is Februarie/My name is February
AFURAKAN
8 Poems From Poverty Tastes Like Fart! Ramblings, Side Notes, Whatever!
KHULILE NXUMALO & SIHLE NTULI
The Gcwala Sessions
LESEGO RAMPOLOKENG
Gwala Reloaded
ARI SITAS
Jazz, Bass and Land
ZOE BOSHOFF & SABITHA SATCHI
Love, War and Insurrection - A discussion about poetry with Ari Sitas
RICO VERGOTINE
Botmaskop (Afrikaanse Mistress)
RAPHAEL D’ABDON
kings fools and madwomen (after dario fo and janelle monae)
claque
JIJANA
home is where the hut is - Notes for a future essay on Ayanda Sikade’s Umakhulu
MATTHIJS VAN DIJK
Bow Project 2: Bowscapes – In Memory of Jürgen Bräuninger
PATRICK LEE-THORP
A discourse in the language of the Global North based on the colonial history of copyright itself: Veit Erlmann's Lion’s Share.
PERFECT HLONGWANE
A close reading of Siphiwo Mahala’s Can Themba – The Making and Breaking of an Intellectual Tsotsi: A Biography
RITHULI ORLEYN
The Anatomy of Betrayal: Molaodi wa Sekake’s Meditations from the Gutter
NCEBAKAZI MANZI
Captive herds. Erasing Black Slave experience
KARABO KGOLENG
Chwayita Ngamlana’s If I Stay Right Here: a novel of the digital age
WAMUWI MBAO
Nthikeng Mohlele’s The Discovery of Love: a bloodless collection.
RONELDA KAMFER
The Poetry of Victor Wessels: black, brooding black
NATHAN TRANTRAAL
Ons is gevangenes van dit wat ons liefhet: Magmoed Darwiesj gedigte in Afrikaans
ARYAN KAGANOF
Khadija Heeger's Thicker Than Sorrow – a witnessing.
KYLE ALLAN
Zodwa Mtirara’s Thorn of the Rose
ADDAMMS MUTUTA
Third Cinema, World Cinema and Marxism without a single African Author?
ekaya
NDUDUZO MAKHATHINI
Spirituality in Bheki Mseleku’s Music
ESTHER MARIE PAUW
Africa Open Improvising & AMM-All Stars
STEPHANUS MULLER
An interview with Jürgen Bräuninger and Sazi Dlamini
off the record
TSITSI ELLA JAJI
Charlotte Manye Maxeke: Techniques for Trans-Atlantic Vocal Projection
KGOMOTSO RAMUSHU
Skylarks and Skokiaan Queens: Jazz women as figures of dissent
OLIVIER LEDURE
Some Posters and LP Covers of South African JAZZ Designed by South African Artists
HERMAN LATEGAN
Memories of Sea Point
ANDERS HØG HANSEN
Sixto and Buffy: Two Indigenous North American Musical Journeys
REINBERT DE LEEUW
Sehnsucht
RICK WHITAKER
The Killer in Me
feedback
VANGILE GANTSHO
Thursday 8 December 2022
KEV WRIGHT
Monday 2 January 2023
WILLIAM KELLEHER
Wednesday, 1 February 2023
STEFAN MAYAKOVSKY
Thursday 2 March 2023
FACEBOOK FEEDBACK
Facebook
herri_gram FEEDBACK
Instagram
the selektah
TENDAYI SITHOLE
Underground: The Sphere of 2SMan
PhD
DIE KOORTJIE UNDERCOMMONS
Inhoudsopgawe
INGE ENGELBRECHT
1. Entering the undercommons
INGE ENGELBRECHT
2. Conserve undercommons
INGE ENGELBRECHT
3. Die Kneg en die Pinksterklong
INGE ENGELBRECHT
4. To be or not to be
INGE ENGELBRECHT
5. Ôs is dai koortjie
INGE ENGELBRECHT
6. Decoding die koortjie
INGE ENGELBRECHT
7. Die Holy of Holies
INGE ENGELBRECHT
8. Epilogue
hotlynx
shopping
SHOPPING
Order Online | Pay Online |
contributors
the back page
DOROTHEE RICHTER
(NON-)THINGS or Why Nostalgia for the Thing is Always Reactionary
ANASTASYA VANINA
War
© 2024
Archive About Contact Africa Open Institute
    • Issue #01
    • Issue #02
    • Issue #03
    • Issue #04
    • Issue #05
    • Issue #06
    • Issue #07
    • Issue #08
    • Issue #09
    • Issue #10
    #09
  • contributors

CONTRIBUTORS

Rick Whitaker

is author of Assuming the Position: A Memoir of Hustling, The First Time I Met Frank O’Hara: Reading Gay American Writers, and An Honest Ghost, a novel made entirely from discrete sentences recycled from other books. He is the single parent of his adopted son, David. For twenty years he has produced concerts and events at Columbia University’s Italian Academy.

Salim Washington

is an accomplished saxophonist, who has led two bands, the Roxbury Blues Aesthetic and the Harlem Arts Ensemble. He has recorded four CDs as a bandleader, including Love in Exile and Harlem Homecoming. He is an avid composer and teaches music and Africana Studies at Brooklyn College.

Stella Viljoen

is associate professor in Visual Studies at Stellenbosch University. She has written widely on representational cultures and how these index gender norms and political aspirations. Her interest is in the capitalist imagination.

Rico Vergotine

I feeling like i’m stepping out of my cave for first time in my life. I am have been a blue color artisan fixing gates and installing security systems, when I was younger, it offered a great opportunity to study people later I learned biodynamic farming at Spier for few years and later started up a pasture reared egg operation on Boschendal. Since I was young I have been a bit of nerd, I have tried to study every possible philosophy system and religion. I started eating psychedelics when I was 17 on the foothills of Botmaskop. Anyway I think it’s ridiculous that psychedelics are illegal yet sugar is sold at every counter…

Anastasya Vanina

is a Ukrainian film critic who lives in Kyiv. She wrote about cinema for Vogue (Ukraine) and was the editor of the “Movies” column in TimeOut (Ukraine). Her dissertation is “The Concept of Will to Power: Experience of Interpretation in World Cinema”.

Lize van Robbroeck

is professor in Visual Studies at Stellenbosch University. She completed undergraduate studies, Honours and Masters at the university of the Witwatersrand. Her Doctorate at the University of Stellenbosch dealt with the discursive reception of modernist black artists’ work in white South African writing. The bulk of her research focuses on the colonial encounter, postcoloniality and race in South African visual arts.

Matthijs van Dijk

is a composer, arranger and violinist based in Cape Town, South Africa. Van Dijk has written several commissions for chamber ensembles and orchestras such as the Carnegie Hall-affiliated Decoda Ensemble, I Musicanti & Peter Donohoe, the LGT Young Soloists, and the Signum Quartet. In 2003 van Dijk won the Priaulx Rainer Prize for composition, and in 2006 he was the recipient of the SAMRO Overseas Scholarship for Composition. In 2016, as Composer-In-Residence at the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival, van Dijk collaborated with Rivonia trialist and freedom fighter Denis Goldberg. Their piece “Moments In A Life” was premiered by an ensemble of leading South African and international performers, with Goldberg himself narrating. As a violinist, van Dijk co-founded The ShhArt Ensemble (also known as The Night Light Collective) with Galina Juritz, Sarah Evans and Nicola du Toit, (who were later joined by Cara Stacey).

mattvandijk.com

Dylan Valley

is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and educator. He is currently a Lecturer at the Centre for Film and Media Studies at the University of Cape Town, and a PhD student in media studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Dylan has directed various documentaries for South African and international television, namely the award winning Afrikaaps (2010), The Uprising of Hangberg with Aryan Kaganof (2010). His PhD research explores how the internet is shaping new methods of filmmaking on the African continent, and in the diaspora.

Nathan Trantraal

is an award-winning and multitalented South African writer. He is the author of three poetry collections – Chokers en Survivors (2013), which won the 2014 AKTV Woordfees Prize and the 2015 Ingrid Jonker Prize; Alles Het Niet Kom Wôd (2017), which won a SALA award in 2019; and Oolog (2020). Trantraal has also published a volume of essays, Wit Issie ’n Colour Nie (2018), translated Jason Reynolds’s Long Way Down (Lang Pad Onnetoe)  into Kaaps, and illustrated four graphic novels (Stormkaap, Coloureds, Crossroads and All Rise).

brittlepaper.com

Lefifi Tladi

(born 4 January 1949) is a South African painter, poet, sculptor and musician. As a member of the Black Consciousness Movement he was exiled from South Africa in 1976. He lived in exile, primarily in Stockholm, Sweden, until the abolition of apartheid, and in 1997 returned to South Africa for the first time in over 20 years. In 2021 he was awarded the lifetime achievement award by the South African Literary Awards.

Bridget Thompson

researches, produces and directs social documentary films rooted in South African and African social and cultural history, curates art exhibitions and directs the Art and Ubuntu trust, an NGO concerned with art education in peri-urban and rural areas of SA. She is currently producing  Going beyond Action, Guns and Gangs, a feature film series, which unfolds intimate, entertaining and enriching stories about South African social life. She  was  a member of the international scientific committee of the UNESCO  Slave Route Project: Resistance, Heritage Liberty 2011-2015, where she played a role advising on film projects and has served on a number of international film festival juries. She also writes about cinema and art.

Eugene Thacker

is the author of several books, including In The Dust of This Planet and Infinite Resignation. He is Professor at The New School in New York City. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, he currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

eugenethacker.com

Bongani Tau

is a Digital Marketing Specialist, Creative Consultant and Culture producer. He is also a fashion researcher @abengonigram

Eugene Skeef

(FRSA) is a South African percussionist,, composer, poet, living in London since 1980. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He also works in conflict resolution, acts as a consultant on cultural development, teaches creative leadership and is a broadcaster. In 2003 he founded Umoya Creations, a charity set up to facilitate this international work.

eugeneskeef.com

Tendayi Sithole

is a Professor at the Department of Political Sciences, University of South Africa. He is the author of Steve Biko: Decolonial Meditations of Black Consciousness and The Black Register (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020).

newframe.org

Ari Sitas

is a dramatist, writer and sociologist who has worked on a range of media that connect art to public life. His creative work started from his involvement with the Junction Avenue Theatre Company in Johannesburg, continued through worker and community theatre in Durban by which time he was also established as a poet. In the last decade he has worked extensively with music composers and performers whether through the Insurrections Ensemble or the AfroAsia Ensemble whose latest work, Sea-drift of Songs has just been released through all media channels. His latest published work is an Oratorio of Small Things that Fall Like a Screw in the Night.

Kolodi Senong

is a painter, educator and a postdoctoral researcher at the Wits School of Arts who also writes about artists relegated to the periphery. He is currently at the University of the Witwatersrand, working on a series of biographic portrait paintings that are influenced by Lefifi Tladi.

Sabitha Satchi

author of Hereafter (Poetrywala, 2021), has been lecturer of English in Delhi University, Commonwealth Scholar (U.K.), and Paul Mellon Fellow (U.S.A). Her poems have been published in several anthologies including The Penguin Book of Indian Poets (Penguin India, 2021) and journals including Poetry Wales (U.K.), Blackbox Manifold (U.K.). A poet in English and Malayalam, her poems have been translated into Slovenian, Marathi, and Hindi among other languages. She is now an art curator, writer and researcher based in New Delhi.

Hilde Roos

is a researcher at Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation at Stellenbosch University. Her work focuses on historical and contemporary representations of opera in South Africa with special reference to the intersection of the genre with politics and race. In 2018 she published The La Traviata Affair – Opera in the Age of Apartheid with University of California Press and in 2020 she co-edited African Theatre – Opera and Music Theatre with Christine Matzke, Lena van der Hoven and Christopher Odhiambo.

Andrea Rolfes

makes stuff, taps away at her computer keys, plays with paint and other things. Gazes out of the window and dreams and is part of the herri team.

Dorothee Richter

is Professor in Contemporary Curating at the University of Reading, UK, and head of the Postgraduate Programme in Curating, CAS/MAS Curating at the Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland; She is director of the PhD in Practice in Curating Programme, a cooperation of the Zurich University of the Arts and the University of Reading. Richter has worked extensively as a curator: she was initiator of Curating Degree Zero Archive, Curator of Kuenstlerhaus Bremen, at which she curated different symposia on feminist issues in contemporary arts and an archive on feminist practices, Materialien/Materials; recently she directed, together with Ronald Kolb, a film on Fluxus: Flux Us Now, Fluxus Explored with a Camera.

Kgomotso Ramushu

I am a writer, researcher, project co-ordinator and Arts administrator. I am proficient in and passionate about business, academic and creative writing. As Artistic Director I have produced theatrical, musical, literary and multi- disciplinary programmes. I have consulted as a Media strategist and Researcher for organisations including the Puku Children’s Literature Foundation, Capital Arts Revolution and Ubuntu & Art Trust.

Lesego Rampolokeng

is a South African performance poet and playwright. He was born into a Catholic, working-class family in Soweto. His mother raised him alone after the early death of his father, who worked in a platinum mine. Rampolokeng briefly studied law at the University of the North. The violence and Catholicism of his childhood inform his poetry’s blunt, unflinching examination of degradation and oppression. Oral folk traditions and contemporary rap music echo throughout his work, and he often incorporates music into his performances.

Esther Marie Pauw

is a research affiliate at the Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation. She is a classically trained flautist with an interest in the capacities of improvisation to explore decolonial music-making. Together with musician Garth Erasmus she presented audience-based events such as ‘Roesdorp’ (2015) and ‘Khoi’npsalms’ (2018) and undertook research projects that included duo explorations under the title of ‘Xnau-Xnau Improvising’ (2020). She plays with the Africa Open Improvising collective. and Perspectives of New Music.

Martijn Pantlin

is a full stack web developer specialized in making custom web experiences. He has more than 20 years of IT experience, working in the fields of 3D animation, art direction and executive management of video games before switching to web development 10 years ago. With roots in Amsterdam, Martijn is a free roaming world citizen and based everywhere the web goes.

orgonemedia.nl

Rithuli Orleyn’s

meditations on race & racism have been published on platforms such as Mail & Guardian, The Con, Sunday Tribune and others. He is a cultural education activist in Soweto. He does this work through the Blackhouse Kollective outfit– a home for Black Consciousness & Pan Africanists thought. He holds a Masters degree (in creative writing) from Rhodes University, is a PhD candidate in History at UWC and a fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research. He has also been invited to share his activism work on national radio and television platforms and has had the pleasure of working with Maldonado-Torres and his Rutgers Advanced Institute for Critical Caribbean Studies.

Khulile Nxumalo

is a poet born in Diepkloof, Soweto, in 1971. He has had poetry published on New Coin, New Contrast & Chimurenga, amongst others. He is a two-time winner of the DALRO poetry prize alongside being the author of two poetry collections, Ten Flapping Elbows,Mama (Deep South 2004) & Fhedzi (Dye Hard Press, 2013).

Sihle Ntuli

is a poet from Durban, South Africa, and a recipient of 2023 Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies Writing Fellowship for Poetry. He is the current editor-in-chief of New Contrast Literary journal and has been featured on leading journals and anthologies including, Years of Fire and Ash: South African Poems of Decolonialisation (Jonathan Ball Publishers 2021), The Johannesburg Review of Books, SAND Journal, ANMLY and ADDA stories. He is the author of the poetry chapbooks Rumblin (uHlanga 2020) & The Nation (River Glass Books 2023).

Nunu Ngema

is a portrait photographer currently based in Rotterdam. +31 6 55777569 |  nunungema.photography@gmail.com

Addamms Mututa

is a senior research associate at the University of Johannesburg. He holds a joint PhD in Film Studies / African Literature from Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen – Germany – and the University of the Witwatersrand – South Africa. He broadly researches postcolonial cinema / literary cultures in Global South.

Stephanus Muller

(born 2 January 1971, Pretoria) is a South African music scholar and writer who has written about South African twentieth-century composition, exile, archiving, language politics, music and apartheid and university institutional transformation. As the last chairman of the Musicological Society of Southern Africa, he was a founding member of the South African Society for Research in Music (SASRIM) in 2006. He also founded the Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS) in 2005 at Stellenbosch University, and the Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation (AOI) at the same university in 2016.

Anthony Muisyo

Anthony was born in 1993, in Nairobi, Kenya’s teeming capital city. He has been involved in making art since he was 7 years old when he used to draw out his favourite storybook characters, Bagheera and Mowgli. His work draws from African folk tales and traditions, the algorithm, ancient history and the city of Nairobi. He finds ways to use digital techniques and tools  in combination with traditional material such as paper, wood and fabric to create work that navigates the varied themes that interest him. His work isn’t solely for his art practice, but for editorial and commercial use as well through clients such as CNN, The Sociological Review, and WeTransfer. He has also been exhibited at the Circle Art Gallery and Noir Gallery in Nairobi. He is currently living and working in Nairobi, Kenya.

Masello Motana

is memory keeper, vocal historian, performer, linguist, rebel in residency, creator of The Vocal Museum, Brandy &Gunpowder, Mafielo.

Palesa Mokwena 

(born in Pretoria 4/6/1990) is a visual artist and poet. She holds a Master’s degree in Art History (Cum Laude) from Rhodes University and works as a part time lecturer. Mokwena is currently pursuing her PhD studies at Stellenbosch University and her work mainly focuses on Black Existentialism in visual culture. Her interests include Black Feminism/Womanism, The Black Consciousness Movement, African Spirituality and Performance Art.

Jurgen Meekel

is a multi media artist who studied audio-visual art and sculpture at the Rietveld Academy of Fine-Arts in Amsterdam where he graduated cum laude in 1989. In 2018 he recieved an MAFA with distinction from Wits University. He works and collaborates on contemporary art installation pieces, sculptures, animation, motion graphics, film and video work that he exhibits/broadcasts nationally and internationally. He currently teaches Post Production at the Wits School of the Arts in Film & TV in Johannesburg. He is also part of the design team of herri.

Wamuwi Mbao

is a writer and literary critic. He teaches literature at Stellenbosch University. His research interests are in South African popular culture, literary criticism, and architecture and automotive histories. He is the editor of Years of Fire and Ash: South African Poetry of Decolonization. He is a fiction critic with the Johannesburg Review of Books. He is the recipient of a South African Literary Award for his body of literary criticism.

Pone Mohammad Mashiangwako

also known as “Hebz” is a young spiritual collector, who’s been spinning since 2005 but only became a full time collector in 2009. Known for his fascination in abstract sounds, he also dabbles with break beats/Electronica /jazz/Afro beats/Samba & Bossa/funk/disco/psychedelic & high life/chance and other sounds that make the human heart smile.

David Marks

is a singer-songwriter, musician and storyteller of note. He stresses that he is not big on nostalgia or the “good old daze” (that never were). “I don’t dwell or live in the past… I just work there,” he says. Time frame “1963 to the present”. The South African-born songwriter, singer, producer and music archivist, has gathered an impressive collection of materials documenting South African music from the mid-1960s to the early 2000s. In 1990, he launched The HYMAP (Hidden Years Music Archive Project) and in 2013 donated his documentation to the Documents Centre for Music (DOMUS) at the University of Stellenbosch.

hiddenyears.co.za

Ncebakazi Manzi

is a Johannesburg-based singer songwriter, audio content specialist and writer. She holds a BJourn from Rhodes University and an MA in Sociology from the University of the Witwatersrand. In 2018 she produced and hosted a podcast about mental health called In Therapy. Since 2020, she has been publishing essays in isiXhosa and English on her blog, Usiba Luyadala. She is currently working towards recording some of the music she has been creating over the past decade and a half. Ncebakazi was recently appointed as the Podcast Manager for Spotify Sub-Saharan Africa.

Lekgetho James Makola

is Chief Executive Officer at Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria. He was formerly Head of Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg.

Dr. Nduduzo Makhathini

grew up in the lush and rugged hillscapes of umGungundlovu in South Africa, a peri-urban landscape in which music and ritual practices were symbiotically linked. Active as an educator and researcher, Makhathini is the head of the music department at Fort Hare University in the Eastern Cape. He has performed at renowned festivals including the Cape Town International Jazz Festival and the Essence Festival (in both New Orleans and South Africa), and in 2019 made his debut appearances the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City, as well as Jazz at Lincoln Center where he was a featured guest with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra on their 3-night musical celebration The South African Songbook in Rose Theater. In addition to producing albums for his peers (such as Thandiswa Mazwai’s Belede and Tumi Mogorosi’s Project Elo), Makhathini has released eight albums of his own since 2014 when he founded the label Gundu Entertainment in partnership with his wife and vocalist Omagugu Makhathini. His 2017 album Ikhambi was the first to be released on Universal Music South Africa and won Best Jazz Album at the South African Music Awards (SAMA) in 2018. His Blue Note debut Modes of Communication: Letters from the Underworlds was named one of the “Best Jazz Albums of 2020” by The New York Times, and was followed by In the Spirit of Ntu in 2022.

Malaika Mahlatsi

is a geographer and researcher at the Institute for Pan African Thought and Conversation. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Bayreuth, Germany.

David Locke

is an Emeritus Professor at Tufts University, USA, ethnomusicologist and performer. He is founder and director of the Agbekor Drum and Dance Society.

Sheba Lo

is a professor in the Department of Africana Studies at California State University, Northridge. Her research interests include African and African American literature (oral, written, and film), including hip hop. Her scholarship highlights artists as agents of social change and political change throughout the African world. Sheba Lo has published chapters in Remembering Africa: Critical Dimensions of African Studies, edited by J. De Maio, S. Scheld, & T. Spencer-Walters, Ni Wakati: Hip Hop and Social Change in Africa edited by M.K. Clark and M. Koster and Higher Learning; Hip Hop in the Ivory Tower, edited by K. Stanford and C. Jones, and articles in Africology, the Journal of Pan African Studies, and the Journal of Negro Education. She received her Ph.D. in African Studies from Howard University.

Don Letts

came to notoriety in the late 70’s as the DJ that single handedly turned a whole generation of punks onto reggae. It was whilst as a d.j at the first punk club ‘The Roxy’ in 1977, that Don adopted the punk D.I.Y ethic and begun to make his first film ‘The Punk Rock Movie’. Shot on Super-8mm it is the only documentary on the U.K punk scene w/ Sex Pistols-The Clash and many others. This led to a period directing over 300 music videos for an eclectic mix of diverse artists ranging from Public Image to Bob Marley. He then moved into documentary work covering the likes of Gil Scot-Heron, The Jam, Sun Ra, George Clinton and most recently Paul McCartney. Dancehall Queen (co-directedby Rick Elgood) shot in location in Jamaica 1997 was his first feature film.

donletts.com

Morris Legoabe

is a journalist and photographer who has worked for the Pretoria Times for 11 years. His studio is based in Mamelodi East. His particular interest is portrait photography of artists. He has worked with visual and performing artists in the Pretoria region since the 1970s with particular support from Lefifi Tladi. He is also an avid street photographer.

Patrick Lee-Thorp

is an independent music professional. He started his music publishing firm Songwrights Publishers, in Rondebosch, Cape Town, SA, in the mid-1970s. He grounded his award-winning record label, Mountain Records, in 1980. Since then, he has collaborated with artists as a record producer releasing many albums and as a promoter presenting those artists on concert stages throughout the world. He now lives and works in Hamburg, Germany.

Olivier Ledure

I was born in 1959 in a non musical or literary French family. I found myself in love with jazz after attending a duet: Archie Shepp with Max Roach in Paris, 1976. Since 2005, I write simply as an amateur about South African jazz in Improjazz, a French jazz magazine. My main aim is to make a better knowledge of South African jazz (history, main dead or living players) among French readers of this magazine. So, I’ve been six times in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg. And Johnny Mbizo Dyani is my man!

Herman Lategan

is an award-winning journalist and writer from Green Point, South Africa, whose work has been published in nearly 50 publications.

LeratoRato Kuzwayo

is a multimedia artists, cultural worker, organiser and activists and is a Founding member of Capital Arts Revolution, which is in the process of an ongoing documenting and archiving the works of artists in Tshwane past and present in order to be able to have thought processes and actionable outcomes attached to cultural production. As a result he has formed part of Ditaola, a collective engaged in the facilitating the archiving processes of the work of Lefifi Tladi.  As a graphic artist LeratoRato explores geometric forms found in creative traditions and is keen on continuing the crafts using the influences found in Malopo/Malombo that are aimed at reconnecting with timeless traditions while imagining future visions for Afrika, by Afrikans. Profile image courtesy of Bra Morris Legoabe.

Karabo Kgoleng

is a broadcaster and facilitator who works with writers and academics in the humanities to give their work a public life. She believes that engagement in social and cultural issues contributes significantly to the transformation of individuals and society. Karabo is a recipient of the South African Literary Award for Journalism and is a sought-after speaker on storytelling as central to public intellectual and cultural life. She has also adjudicated prestigious literary awards and worked on selection panels for short story anthologies. She has worked as Books Editor for City Press, talk show host at SAfm and 702, and at the Department of Arts and Culture as Deputy Director: Books and Publishing.

Moemedi Kepadisa

is a former National Education Commissar and stalwart of the Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO).

Russel Mbulelo Kana

(Badabeam Badaboom) is an Eastern Cape based artist, a cultural activist and writer. He’s a multi-award winning documentary and fine art photographer. He is the co-founder of the Makwande collective focused on South African indigenous visual culture and history through multimedia presences.

Ronelda Kamfer

was born and raised in and around Cape Town and began writing in her teens. She writes in Kaaps-Afrikaans which, unlike standard Afrikaans, is a spoken language containing English words and slang. Her poems had already been published here and there when she debuted with the collection Noudat Slapende Honde (Now Then Sleeping Dog, 2008), which paints a sharp picture of poverty. Santenkraam (2012) contains stories in verse about a fishing village that must make way for a military site during the apartheid era. Mammie (2017) is a loving as well as raw ode to her mother and the women of her generation. Chinatown (2021), translated into Dutch by Alfred Schaffer like her other volumes, is typically hard-hitting. With restraint and determination, Kamfer composes poems about rape, humiliation, domestic violence and the position and role of women.

Aryan Kaganof

conceived, curates and edits herri.

Jijana

is the author of two books, a memoir Nobody’s Business (2014, Jacana) and a poetry collection Failing Maths & My Other Crimes (2015, uHlanga), awarded the Ingrid Jonker Poetry Prize in 2016. He holds an MA in Creative Writing from Rhodes University. Jijana writes about village life in an attempt to question stereotypes given to rural subjects, the African Jim trope and rural-urban migration. His awards include the Ingrid Jonker Poetry Prize (2016), Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Prize (2014) and the Anthony Sampson Foundation Award (2014).

Cecilia Järdemar 

is an artist, writer and Senior Lecturer in Photography and Moving image at Konstfack, Stockholm, with an MA and an AHRC-funded PhD from the Royal College of Arts, London. In her participatory artistic research, she explores contested historical processes and narratives and how they affect contemporary society today. Her large-scale installations have been shown at the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Kinshasa, Kalmar Konstmuseum, Gävle Konsthall and the New Arts Exchange in Nottingham, among others, and her texts on photography published by the Whitechapel Gallery, Riding House Press and The Pitt Rivers Museum. Currently, Järdemar leads the collaborative artistic research project Reframing the Encounter (2020-2023), and since 2022 she is a member of the committee for artistic research at the Swedish Research Council.

Tsitsi Ella Jaji

is an associate professor of English at Duke University with expertise in African and African American literary and cultural studies, with special interests in music, poetry, and black feminisms. Her book, Africa in Stereo: Music, Modernism and Pan-African Solidarity (Oxford), won the African Literature Association’s First Book Prize. The book traces how exchanges between African American, Ghanaian, Senegalese and South African artists shaped cultural and political liberation projects.
Originally from Zimbabwe, Jaji is also a poet. Her most recent collection, Mother Tongues (2019) was awarded the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Prize.

Frédéric Iriarte

(born 1963 in Paris), is a contemporary plastic artist. Since 1986, he has lived and worked in Sweden. In the 1980s he belonged to the avant-garde movement Figuration Libre. Iriarte is a painter, sculptor, visual artist, designer, musician, composer, filmmaker, publisher of art & design books, researcher & developer (R&D) in the field of monumental public sculptures and urban spaces with holistic approach and methodologies.

Petko Iordanov

Fred Ho

was a leading figure in avant-garde jazz from the 1970s through the 2010s, and he was also a scholar of culture and politics and a political activist.

againstthecurrent.org

Russel Hlongwane

is a cultural producer from Durban. His work enquires about the effects of heritage, modernity, culture and tradition on black life. Working in the modes of creative research, cultural production, performance, design theory, writing, film and curatorship. He is currently (2023) pursuing a MPhil in southern urbanism at the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town.

Perfect Hlongwane

Editing copy across a range of fields and disciplines is my primary passion. Writing copy is a close second. I live in the world of words.

Shannen Hill

is president of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association and research associate at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art

Anders Høg Hansen

has researched popular memory and citizen engagement through art and alternative education in Israel-Palestine, Tanzania, Sweden/Denmark – and recently also South Africa. He has an MA and PhD in cultural studies from the UK and is a senior lecturer at Malmö University, Sweden, working primarily on the hybrid MA program Communication for Development.

Diana Ferrus

lives in Kuils River, Cape Town and works at UWC’s Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. She writes in both English and Afrikaans about matters of race, gender, class and reconciliation. She’s written several poems and books, and she is a popular performance poet, seen at many local and large out-of-province arts festivals. She strives to make sure her words have a real impact on the world.

Stanley Lawrence Elkin

(May 11, 1930 – May 31, 1995) was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. His extravagant, satirical fiction revolves around American consumerism, popular culture, and male-female relationships.

Nhlanhla Dhlamini

I’m a Radio Broadcasting and digital art Studies Student at Witwatersrand University also an underground Dj / Musician, Virtual  Band Creator, experimental writer, cybershaman, book collector. I use new tools and learn new techniques, I believe by using digital tools and innovative art discourses one is capable of being a CyberShamans / digital griot. I use digital art and Sonic art strategically and alchemically, I specialize in the field of Jazz edutainment and the relevant questions of globalization, post apartheid demographics and anthropology.

Arturo Desimone

is an Argentinean-Arubian poet and visual artist, writing in English, Spanish, and Papiamento. His work has previously appeared in sx salon, the New Orleans Review, Círculo de Poesía, BIM, Stockholm Review, and elsewhere.

Raphael d’Abdon

is the author of four collections of poems, sunnyside nightwalk (Geko, 2013), salt water (Poetree Publishing, 2016), the bitter herb (The Poets Printery, 2018) and Poesie scelte – Selected poems (2010–2020) (Besa, 2021). He is the poetry editor of the literary magazine BKO and South Africa’s representative of the Africa Haiku Network (AHN).

Kevin Bismark Cobham

is a criminal lawyer based in London, with a keen interest in Afropessimism and related Black(ened) Thought.

Louis Chude-Sokei

is Professor Of English, George And Joyce Wein Chair In African American & Black Diaspora Studies, Director Of The African American & Black Diaspora Studies Program at Boston University. He  is a writer and scholar whose books includes The Last Darky: Bert Williams, Black on Black Minstrelsy and the African Diaspora, The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics and the acclaimed memoir, Floating in A Most Peculiar Way. His work has been translated into multiple languages, including Hungarian, German, Spanish, Italian and Korean. He is the Editor in Chief of The Black Scholar, one of the oldest and leading journals of Black Studies in the United States. Chude-Sokei has collaborated with numerous artists, performers, and programmers on projects focused on sound, music, race and technology. This includes legendary choreographer Bill T. Jones who is adapting sections of The Sound of Culture for performance, and iconic Berlin electronic artists, Mouse on Mars with whom he has produced sound installations and the celebrated album Anarchic Artificial Intelligence (Thrill Jockey Records 2021). He is also a curator of Carnegie Hall’s 2022 Afrofuturism Festival.

adk.de

Zoë Boshoff

is a social scientist, poet and entrepreneur. She studied anthropology and English literature at the University of Cape Town. She provides fundraising and strategy support to research groups and non-profit organisations. Zoë is an avid reader and writer of poetry, which she uses to make sense of her own experience of being human.

Julian Birbrajer’s

life long obsession is to explore language and time by means of photography. In order to create a general label for his work, he has chosen the term ”Photolinguistics”. He has also translated Ivan Vladislavic into Swedish.

Belkis Ayón

(23 January 1967 – 11 September 1999) was a Cuban printmaker who specialized in the technique of collography. Ayón created large, highly detailed allegorical collagraphs based on Abakuá, a secret, all-male Afro-Cuban society. Her work is often in black and white, consisting of ghost-white figures with oblong heads and empty, almond-shaped eyes, set against dark, patterned backgrounds.

Kyle Allan

is an author with a well-developed publication record, a researcher with a strong and rapidly expanding body of original work, a versatile musician, a socio-creative innovator with several years of leadership roles, and an educator, lecturer and facilitator with several years of teaching and lecturing experience. He is the Editor of the poetry journal New Coin.

Afurakan

(Thabiso Mohare) is a poet and recording artist and has been active in South African poetry since 2002. His work has been published in various anthologies, including Marikana – A Moment in Time and his first full studio album Words Over Dub was released worldwide in February 2017. He is the co-founder and CEO of the Word N Sound Live Lit­erature Company – a groundbreaking poetry development project that has been running in Johannesburg since 2010. Thabiso is a five-time ProMax BDA award-winning copywriter and has various major commissions that saw him spread his writing to television including the award winning Channel O Hip-Hop Express Promo.

behance.net
contributors
the back page
© 2024
Archive About Contact Africa Open Institute