CHIMURENGA LIBRARY
Liberation Radio is an ongoing query on knowledge production via African sound worlds, and long-term research on broadcasting and cultural initiatives by liberation movements across the continent. Our research focuses on the city-studios of Cairo, Accra, Conakry, Algiers, Dar es Salaam, Lusaka and more, the so-called revolutionary capitals which hosted and generated this production through their own national broadcasting infrastructure. Through this study we would hope to map the circulation of ideas through these places, amidst regime changes and the shifty allegiances of the Cold War and Sino-Soviet conflict, as well as the nodes beyond the continent such as Delhi, Havana, East-Berlin, Moscow, and of course, the surveillance centres of the West.
Liberation Radio, has taken several forms. Chimurenga’s roving studio PASS (found at panafricanspacestation.org) engaged with the questions and imaginaries through PASS Landings where the studio situates into a historically charged space to explore the thoughts, memories, and ideas of the people within. Produced by or broadcasted through PASS are further sound interventions culminating from the Liberation Radio project, instilled via mixes, interviews, concerts, and live events.
The continuous convergence of text & sound within Liberation Radio has materialized in print via our published works. The Chimurenga Chronic, a publication borne out of an urgent need to write our world differently, intercepts discussions and thoughts of musicians, musical thinkers and orature of our histories only traceable in sound, such as bassist Herbie Tsoaeli getting into African time, the Accordion Cowboys of Basotho or lived accounts of Winnie Mandela’s time of exile. Furthermore, the pavement-literature project, the Chimurenganyana Series consists of factions, essays, scores, interviews, liner notes, musical analysis, travel writing, personal impressions, political and social commentary. The series includes textured transcriptions of the spoken word, and stories told of how scores and tracklists are made.
LIBERATION RADIO: PASS POP-UP
Taking advantage of both the intimacy and unpredictability of the live radio studio space and the reach and scope of the internet, PASS POP-UP seeks to forge new collaborations across time and space. A combination of live conversations, travelogues, discussion sessions and performances, together with exhibitions of new and archival material interrogate our shared histories.
The programming of each pop-up studio is curated by Chimurenga in collaboration with local cultural producers and thinkers culminating in an ongoing archive of conversations and experiences. Through a single event, the PASS pop-up studio brings together the processes of creation and production; documentation and archiving, and, finally, dissemination and broadcasting.
LIBERATION RADIO: LIVE EVENTS
Since inception Liberation Radio has produced live events broadcasted on panafricanspacestation. The events such as ‘Grounation’ a tribute to the seminal album by Count Ossie & The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari featured below are programmatically linked to our query of navigating soundworlds.
LIBERATION RADIO: PUBLICATIONS
In the print realm all of Chimurenga’s publications overlap with the world of sound, whether it be through notating orature in the latest issue of the Chronic, scribing interviews with musical greats or discussing how dub influenced the creation of the world.
LIBERATION RADIO: LISTEN
Living only in audio, some of Liberation Radio’s interventions can only be heard.
more on Pan African Space Station and our official Mixcloud
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