Composed, arranged and performed by Neo Muyanga, this audio cd supplement was part of the Chimurenga Chronicle (October 2011) , a speculative newspaper which is issue 16 of Chimurenga.
Tracklist:
a) 1+1= (a re-composition of a 5000-year-old offering to Lord Ganesha, the Hindu deity, an opener of sorts)
b) 4:7 (heaven’s on the ocean is a proportional refrain on reaching nirvana, the 7th grade, via the mundane material world)
c) 3sin= rθ (sino projection technology theme)
d) 3(x)n (illegal border crossing and migration theme. composed for dancers)
e) e=mcx \rightarrow \infty (a true story about an explosive riot day with SADF soldiers who attacked Soweto on June 16th, 1985. Composed for those who got hurt)
f) ƒ:X→Y (horizon heart aflame. Composed for a lover)
g) (a summing of random themes theme)
h) 4x+2 (the 2 or 4 step theme)
i) y~ 6/8 (a travelling theme in 6 parts over eight. Composed for puppets)
j) y\ge \!\, 6/8 (a running theme in 6 parts over 8 )
k) 1/4° (a kota bread theme. Composed for skolies and thieves)
l) (a perpetual circle. Composed for an apartheid-era multi-racial soccer club)
Keorapetse Kgositsile & The Black Arts Movement by Uhuru Portia Phalafala (Wits University Press, 2024)
Phalafala on "the foundational influence of Kgositsile's mother and grandmother on his craft and ... the importance of the oral/aural traditions, indigenous knowledge systems, and cosmologies he carried with him into and after exile ... Using the original concept of 'elsewhere', the author maps the sources of Kgositsile's transformative verse, which in turn generated 'poetics of possibility' for his contemporaries in the Black Arts and Black Power Movements and beyond - among them Maya Angelou, Larry Neal, Gwendolyn Brooks, Tom Dent, members of The Last Poets, Otabenga Jones & Associates, and rapper Earl Sweatshirt - who all looked to his work to model their identities, cultural movements and radical traditions."
South African Tswana poet, journalist and political activist Keorapetse Kgositsile (1938-2018), also known by his pen name Bra Willie, was an influential member of the African National Congress in the 1960s and 1970s. He was inaugurated as South Africa's National Poet Laureate in 2006.
Uhuru Portia Phalafala is a Senior Lecturer at Stellenbosch University, author of the poetry collection Mine Mine Mine (2023), and co-editor of Keorapetse Kgositsile: Collected poems 1969-2018 (2023).
