“…The struggle of black people inevitably appear in an intensely cultural form because the social formation in which their distinct political traditions are now manifest has constructed the arena of politics on ground overshadowed by centuries of metropolitan capitalist development, thereby denying them recognition as legitimate politics. Blacks conduct a class struggle in and through race. The BC of race and class cannot be empirically separated, the class character of black struggles is not a result of the fact that blacks are predominantly proletarian, thought this is true…”- (Frank Talk Staff Writers in ‘Azania Salutes Tosh’ – circa 1981)
front cover:
Tosh by Steve Gordon
back cover:
Kippie by Basil Breakey
DeAesthetic. Writing with and from the Black Sonic by Tumi Mogorosi (Iwalewa Books, 2024)
DeAesthetic. Writing with and from the Black Sonic presents essays by Johannesburg-based artist, jazz percussionist and thinker Tumi Mogorosi. The essays focus on the Black Sonic as a dislocated episteme, which identifies the aesthetic as a limitation. In their de-centring, the texts fundamentally open a way to write and read beyond hegemonic knowledge validations. As a reading that straddles between Brenda Fassie, Louis Armstrong, Louis Moholo-Moholo and Sade, they are in visual conversation with symbols created by Emeka Alams of Gold Coast Trading Company.