What could the curriculum be – if it was designed by the people who dropped out of school so that they could breathe? The latest issue of Chimurenga provides alternatives to prevailing educational pedagogy. Through fiction, essays, interviews, poetry, photography and art, contributors examine and redefine rigid notions of essential knowledge.
Presented in the form of a textbook, Chimurenga 15 simultaneously mimics the structure while gutting it. All entries are regrouped under subjects such as body parts, language, grace, worship and news (from the other side), numbers, parents, police and many more. Through a classification system that is both linear and thematic, the textbook offers multiple entry points into a curriculum that focuses on the un-teachable and values un-learning as much as it’s opposite.
Inside: Amiri Baraka waxes poetic on the theoretics of Be-Bop; Coco Fusco flips the CIA’s teaching manual for female torturers; Karen Press and Steve Coleman instruct in folk-dancing; Dambudzo Marechera proposes a “guide to the earth”; Dominique Malaquais designs the museum we won’t build; through self-portraits Phillip Tabane and Johnny Dyani offer method to the Skanga (black music family); and Winston Mankunku refuses to teach.
Other contributors include Binyavanga Wainaina, Akin Adesokan, Isoje Chou, Sean O’Toole, Pradid Krishen, E.C. Osundu, Salim Washington, Sefi Atta, Ed Pavlic, Neo Muyanga, Henri-Michel Yere, Medu Arts Ensemble, Aryan Kaganof, Khulile Nxumalo and Walter Mosley amongst others. Cover by Johnny “Mbizo” Dyani.
Music by Sufi Inayat Khan (CUTT PRESS at Hopscotch reading room, 2022)
Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882 – 1927) was an exemplar of Universal Sufism and founder of the "Sufi Order in the West" in 1914 in London. Later, in 1923, the Sufi Order of the London period was dissolved into a new organization called the "International Sufi Movement". He initially came to the West as a representative of classical Indian music, having received the title Tansen from the Nizam of Hyderabad but soon turned to the introduction and transmission of Sufi thought and practice. "Music" is a compilation of lectures given by Hazrat Inayat Khan. It conveys an insight into the deep knowledge of Indian mysticism and music in a very simple language. His teachings on sound present a vision of the harmony which underlies and infuses every aspect of life; science of breath, law of rhythm, the creative process, healing power and psychological influence of music. Riso-printed edition of 50 by Hopscotch, Berlin (2022) of the 3rd printing by the Sufi Publishing Company Ltd., New Delhi (1973).