The Making of Mannenberg
By John Edwin Mason On a winter’s day in 1974, a group of musicians led by Abdullah Ibrahim (or Dollar Brand, as most still knew him) entered a recording studio on Bloem Street, in the heart of Cape Town, and emerged, hours later, having changed South African music forever. Together, they had created “Mannenberg”, a song […]
The Way I See It: We Need New Myths
By Shabaka Hutchings Probing the musical narratives of jazz and hip-hop, saxophonist and composer Shabaka Hutchings plays outside the time signatures common to diasporan interpretation and orthodox analysis. Moving beyond the value systems and invisible hierarchies that shape understanding and impose context, he imagines another sonic architecture. A phrase from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, “moving the […]
A Long History of Prince’s Hairstyles
By Gary Card This Illustration features in the July 2014 edition of the Chronic, available in print or as a pdf here, or from your nearest dealer. The edition gives focus to graphic stories and blends illustrations, photography, written analysis, infographics, interviews, letters and more to speak of everyday complexities in the Africa in […]
Thinking of Brenda
[hr] By Njabulo Ndebele [hr] I first heard Brenda Fassie sing on a languid, sunny, spring Saturday morning in the Roma valley of Lesotho. It must have been in 1984. It was one of those mornings when the world demonstrates the notion of slowness. There was the blue haze in the horizon, rural smoke rising […]
The Art of Suspense
Lidudumalingani Mqombothi revisits the football matches of his childhood, when radio, not television, was most people’s ticket to the beautiful game. But a radio was not the only requirement for a full experience – an active imagination and an attentive ear were integral to engaging in the virtuosity of the audio commentary. Only a […]