The Chimurenganyana Boxset Vol.1 – Four Stories about Music in Africa, the latest publication in our stores. This limited edition print is a handwoven collection of stories which both trace the lineage of rhythmic sounds and interstice them with the emotive complexities that creating music holds.
Each of the first volume, with a unique set of covers, includes the following publications; The Making of Mannenberg by John Edwin Mason, A Silent Way: Routes of South African Jazz, 1946-1978 by Julian Jonker, 52 Niggers by Stacy Hardy and Thinking of Brenda by Njabulo Ndebele. The boxset Four Stories About Music in Africa is available here.
For more on the journey of music on the southern tip on the continent, Lindokuhle Nkosi gives us the following offering, excerpted from The New Thing . . .
Here is this sound, this thing coming out of the most provincial of cities. This thing, as fierce as the Cape Doctor itself, in the unlikeliest of places. The milieu is important because we have to understand how and why it happens. Why the clashing symbols, the languid stroke of the bone? Why the stifling whale bellows? The incessant boom-boom-bang? Does this happen in spite of the city? In spite of the aggression of its administrators and its looming mountain, the segregated geography and temperamental winds and citizens? Or does this groove ooze out from the gaps and the fissures? Does it boil and bubble – magma in the underground tunnels and subways, escaping like a whisper because of the pretentious façades and not despite them?
Typically, writers who approach this thing speak of frustration. Where does one start to quantify it, what language exists to speak about it? What story is there to tell, that hasn’t already been sketched in the music? The writers speak also of silence. Of an absence on the airwaves, a cold shoulder at the award shows. In “A Silent Way”, his essay on the music, Julian Jonker mentions “silence” 15 times in the opening paragraphs. A dull throbbing. White noise. The thing, however, is a buzzing black streaked with bolts of electricity. We think of it as silence because we can’t see a space for it in the city’s framework. We think of it as silence because we’re still deciding how to sound it out. Like toddlers, we’re still forming the words. Working them out on our lips and tongues, rubbing them against our palates. We know it exists in the gaps, and yet we try to define it in tangibles and absolutes . . .
For Nkosi’s full article with an audio accompaniment from Boeta Gee, visit here.
To purchase the limited Chimurenganyana Boxset vol.1 – Four Stories About Music in Africa in print, head to our online shop or visit Chimurenga Factory at 157 Victoria Road, Woodstock.
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