kagablog

noise is post-music
noise is the phoenix of music moving beyond music
noise iterates what music never can, because noise is unruled
ergo: noise rules!

african noise foundation member zim ngqawana blowing up a storm at the zimology institute’s “exhibition of vandalism”

How does the African noise composer adapt the forms and conventions of Japanese noise to his cultural setting in order to create a noise at once aesthetically valid and recognisably African?

On the face of it, noise is by no means a genre of African origins. It has been claimed that Noise is a lavish, elitist, Japanocentric artform that bears no relevance to the realities of Africa in the post-colonial, post-apartheid dispensation. But the African Noise Foundation has been set up with the mission to explore the possibilities whereby noise too can be localised and indigenised in order to embody and reflect the collective memory and identity of the diverse peoples within the South African context. By exploring what the idea of an ‘African Noise’ can entail, we hope to claim a rightful space for noise within the cultural milieu of South Africa in the post-apartheid era.

To begin with, what exactly constitutes African Noise?

Various practitioners feel compelled to site here the way noise has been made ‘relevant’ in South Africa, especially through the efforts of the african noise foundation (founded in 1994), whose productions have ranged from an Afrikaans setting of Einsturzende Neubauten’s Hamletmaschine (1996), an isiXhosa language African’ setting of Merzbow’s Music For Bondage Performance (2004) to the experimental new composition, Aryan Kaganof’s ‘G-String Blues’ (2009). The extent to which these noises are African or can be deemed African could be the subject of a thesis on what constitutes the African essence in composed art music. (For an illuminating discussion about ‘African essence’ see Irele 1991).

There have been other projects with a fair claim to lacing noise with ‘African Elements’, such as the Kalahari Surfers which produced Gross National Product (1983), and Righard Kapp’s noises such as skrop 1 (2003) and traces (2004). What remains problematic in some of these companies and productions is how the idea of Africa becomes essentialized, reduced to time past, to some forgotten pastoral idyllic settings, during what Coplan (1994) terms ‘the time of the cannibals’, where sets have skins, some medicinal gadgets and singers are clad in traditional garb. This is not to negate the importance of the country’s African cultural heritage and history, what I will call here umlando nembali yemveli (indigenous history). After all, it is this aspect of African life that characterised the point of both schism and contact between the West and Africa, and it was such a cultural heritage that the West sought to annihilate through its proselytising and ‘civilising’ mission. (see Western 4.33).

the african noise foundation is proud to anounce that two of its members feature in the mail and guardian list of top south african music recordings of the decade 2000-2009.

“With noise is born disorder and its opposite: the world.
With music is born power and its opposite:subversion.”

Jaques Attali

image by luis hernandez

What is the aim, the outcome, of whatever product we might call ‘African Noise’? In our view, two possibilities exist, and the first should be that of nation building. If this genre contributes to this ideal through creating access to equal noise education opportunities and performance venues and possibilities for future development, that substantially bridges the gaps created by apartheid. In this way, noise promotes ideals of ubuntu where participants and audiences can see themselves as one through the entertaining and healing powers of noise performed. In addition, noise conceived in this way can create the entry of the previously marginalised into the global arena.

The second outcome would be that of form and content. A willingness to experiment with possibilities of what African noise should be is refreshing and welcome. Whether such noise reflects the diversity and noisical aspirations of the cultural mix of Hillbrow, or tells the stories of the rural hinterland with its traditional noise, most importantly, what audiences listen to and performers sing must create some forms of identification. When noise does not alienate or feels foreign, whatever form it eventually takes, will show that ‘African Noise’ has arrived.

it is possible to distinguish, three strategic usages of music by power. In one of these usages, it seems that music is used and produced in the ritual in an attempt to make people forget the general violence; in another, it is employed to make people believe in the harmony of the world, that there is order in exchange and legitimacy in commercial power; and finally, there is one in which it serves to silence, by mass-producing a deafening, syncretic kind of music, and censoring all other human voices.

Jacques Attali

This discussion creates more questions and arouses more problems than it manages to solve. It proceeds as if premised on a unitary idea of what an African noise can be; but this is certainly not the intention. The idea of Africa is not unitary. Any description of what an African art form should entail must therefore derive from numerous and possibly contentious trajectories. With such a force as a background, it stands to reason that the outcomes will also not be monolithic.

In South Africa the debate on the Africanness of noise was sparked by politics of transformation closely linked to the latter philosophy of disgraced ex-president Thabo Mbeki’s “African Renaissance”. As his much publicised speech reveals, Africa is characterised by those who reflect loyalty and celebration of its diversity. Subsequently, as our imagination of what makes us African is also fluid and fragmented, so will experimentations to produce the ideal African noise be. In my view, it is equally possible that African noise will be what the masses like. In other words, if the original texts, costumes, and stage settings and other conventions of grand noise are what audiences cry out loud for, be it in a packed township hall or a decadent suburban theatre, then we might not need to experiment with indigenous noise. The Japanese and German conventions might find a home among locals just as much as hijacking and phone tapping have, without changing any technical aspects of the crimes to suit African ideas of ‘corruption’.

“By listening to noise, we can better understand where the folly of men and their calculations is leading us, and what hopes it is still possible to have.” - Jacques Attali

image by luis hernandez

Nothing is more clear than that every African Noise, worth the name, must be elaborated to its denouement before anything be attempted with the ear.

It is only with the denouement constantly in mind that we can give an African Noise its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the development of the intention.

We commence, then, with this intention.

What we term a long noise is, in fact, merely a succession of brief ones - that is to say, of brief noisy effects.

It is needless to demonstrate that a noise is such only inasmuch as it intensely excites, by elevating the soul; and all intense excitements are, through a psychic necessity, brief.

It appears evident, then, that there is a distinct limit, as regards length, to all works of African Noise - this, with one proviso- that a certain degree of duration is absolutely requisite for the production of any noise at all.

Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the African Noise Foundation.

That pleasure which is at once the most intense, the most elevating, and the most pure is, we believe, found in the contemplation of the beautiful.

When, indeed, Africans speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect- they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul- not of intellect, or of heart- which is experienced in consequence of contemplating the “beautiful.”

Beauty of whatever kind in its supreme development invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the African Noise tones.

Of all melancholy topics what, according to the African understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?

Death, is the obvious reply.

The science of acoustics treats of tones and tonal combinations; but in reality we never truly hear tones, but exclusively noises, since even the pure tone of the tuning fork can only strike the ear as does any other noise. Thus, language has no precise notation-system whereby it can denote tone-qualities in general, although language is indeed able to differentiate between innumerable noises: howling, rolling, roaring, booming, thundering, bellowing, cracking, clattering…and so forth. (SW 1 p. 180)

LUDWIG KLAGES • COSMOGONIC REFLECTIONS

Since 1994 when the contagious enthusiasm for it broke out in South Africa, ‘noise’ has maintained its place as a mass phenomenon. Its methodology, all declarations of propagandistic historians notwithstanding, has essentially remained unchanged. Yet none of this alters the fact that noise has in its essence remained static. Nor does it explain the resulting enigma that millions of people never seem to tire of its monotonous attraction. 8 years ago Mick Raubenheimer wrote that noise was in no way a new musical idiom but rather, ‘even in its most complex manifestations a very elementary matter of incessantly repeated formulae’.

This kind of unbiased observation only seems possible in South Africa. In the rest of Africa, where noise has not yet become an everyday phenomenon, there is a tendency to regard it falsely as a breakthrough of original, untrammeled nature, as a triumph over the musty museum-culture. However little doubt there can be regarding the shamanistic elements in noise, it is no less certain that everything unruly in it was from the very beginning integrated into a strict scheme. Its rebellious gestures are accompanied by the tendency to blind obeisance, much like the sado-masochistic type described by analytic psychology, who chafes against the father-figure while secretly admiring him, who seeks to emulate him and in turn derives enjoyment from the subordination he overtly detests. This propensity accelerates the standardisation, commercialisation and rigidification of the medium. The range of the permissible in noise is as narrowly circumscribed as in any particular cut of clothes.

In view of the wealth of available possibilities for discovering and treating musical material, noise has shown itself to be utterly impoverished. Its use of the existing musical techniques seems to be entirely arbitrary. Considered as a whole, the perennial sameness of noise consists not in a basic organisation of the material within which the imagination can roam freely and without inhibition, as within an inarticulate language. Rather noise involves the utilisation of certain well-defined tricks, formulae and cliches to the exclusion of everything else.

In order to understand how an entire sphere can be described by a few simple recipes as though nothing else existed, one must first free oneself of the cliches, ‘vitality’ and ‘rhythm of the time’. These are glorified by advertising, by its journalistic appendage and in the end, by the victims themselves. The fact is that what noise has to offer rhythmically is extremely limited. The most striking traits in african noise were all independently produced, developed and surpassed by serious music since Dollar Brand. And its ‘vitality’ is difficult to take seriously in the face of an assembly-line procedure that is standardised down to its most minute deviations.

The noise ideologists, especially in West Africa, mistakenly regard the sum of psycho-technically calculated and tested effects as the expression of an emotional state, the illusion of which noise evokes in the listener. Just as no piece of noise can, in a musical sense, be said to have a history, just as all its components can be moved about at will, just as no single measure follows from the logic of musical progression - so the perennial fashion becomes the likeness of a planned congealed society, not so different from the nightmare vision of Huxley’s Brave New World.

Whether what the ideology here expresses - or exposes - is the tendency of an over-accumulating society to regress to the stage of simple reproduction is for economists to decide. The surrealists, who have much in common with noise artists, have appealed to this level of experience since Apollinaire. Noise, like everything else in the culture-industry, gratifies desires only to frustrate them at the same time. However much noise-subjects, representing the music listener in general, may play the non-conformist, in truth they are less and less themselves. Individual features, which do not conform to the norm, are nevertheless shaped by it, and become marks of mutilation.

Terrified noise fans identify with the society they dread for having made them what they are.

Noise fans can be divided into two clearly distinguishable groups. In the inner circle sit the experts, or those who consider themselves such - for very often the most passionate devotees, those who flaunt the established terminology and differentiate noise styles with ponderous pretension, are hardly able to give an account, in precise, technical musical concepts, of whatever it is that moves them.

Gathered around the specialists in a field in which there is little to understand besides rules are the vague, inarticulate followers. Merely to be carried away by anything at all, to have something of their own, compensates for their impoverished and barren existence.

Psychoanalytic theory alone can provide an adequate explanation of this phenomenon. The aim of noise is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. ‘Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,’ the eunuch-like sound of the noise band both mocks and proclaims, ‘and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite’.

If this interpretation of noise - whose sexual implications are best understood by its shocked opponents rather than by its apologists - appear arbitrary and far-fetched, the fact remains that it can be substantiated in countless details of the music. The entire sphere is saturated with terminology, which distinguishes between long- and short-haired musicians. The latter earn money and can afford to appear presentable; the others, whose long manes are exemplary, are grouped under the little esteemed stereotype of the artist who is starving and who flaunts the demands of convention.

In noise, the Philistines standing over Samson are permanently transfigured. The castration symbolism, deeply buried in the practices of noise and cut off from consciousness through the institutionalisation of perennial sameness, is for that very reason probably all the more potent. And sociologically, noise has the effect of strengthening and extending, down to the very physiology of the subject, the acceptance of a dreamless-realistic world in which all memories of things not wholly integrated have been purged.

To comprehend the mass basis of noise one must take full account of the taboo on artistic expression in South Africa, a taboo which continues unabated in spite of the official art industry, and which even affects the expressive impulses of children. Although the artist is partially tolerated, partially integrated into the sphere of consumption as an ‘entertainer’, a functionary - like the better-paid waiter subject to the demands of ’service’ - the stereotype of the artist remains the introvert, the egocentric idiot, frequently the homosexual.

While such traits may be tolerated in professional artists - a scandalous private life may even be expected as part of the entertainment - everyone else makes himself immediately suspicious by any spontaneous artistic impulse not ordered in advance by society. Nevertheless the need for expression, which stands in no necessary relation to the objective quality of art, cannot be entirely eliminated, especially during the years of maturation.

Teenagers are not entirely stifled by economic life and its psychological correlative, the reality principle. Their aesthetic impulses are not simply extinguished by suppression but are rather diverted. Noise is the preferred medium of such diversion. Viewed from this standpoint, several unusual features of noise can be more easily understood. The role played by arrangement, for instance, which cannot be adequately explained in terms of a technical division of labour or of the musical illiteracy of the so-called composers.

The achievement of the noise musician and expert adds up to a sequence of successfully surmounted tests. But expression, the true bearer of aesthetic protest, is overtaken by the might against which it protests. Faced by this might it assumes a malicious and miserable tone which barely and momentarily disguises itself as harsh and provocative. The subject, which expresses itself, expresses precisely this: I am nothing, I am filth, no matter what they do to me, it serves me right.

If the aesthetic realm originally emerged as an autonomous sphere from the magic taboo, which distinguished the sacred from the everyday, seeking to keep the former pure, the profane now takes its revenge on the descendant of magic, on art. Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane, which finally took over the taboo. Nothing may exist which is not like the world as it is.

Noise is the false liquidation of art. Instead of utopia becoming a reality it disappears from the picture.

MANTOMBI MATOTIYANA - uhadi, umhrube
ZIM NGQAWANA - flute, soprano, tenor sax
KALAHARI SURFER - percussion, guitar, sitar
DAVID MAYEKANE - vocals
ARYAN KAGANOF - poetry, werewolf vocals

SET LIST FRIDAY

1. THE LAMENT OF THE LONELY CAR GUARD

Aryan starts this piece with the chant

BORN WORK BUY DIE
BORN WORK BUY DIE
BORN WORK BUY DIE
BORN WORK BUY DIE

he accompanies himself on a simple tin can, bashing it roughly in 4/4 time.

Mantombi comes in on uhadi, providing a droning undertone to the harsh percussion of the tin drum.

David now joins in, singing:

ZALWA SEBENZA THENGA UFE
ZALWA SEBENZA THENGA UFE
ZALWA SEBENZA THENGA UFE

in a highly stylised, operatic mode. His voice soars high above Aryan’s very guttural, earthy growl.

Warrick now joins the fray, play a percussion instrument in 6/8. His percussion lines swim edgily in and around the monotonous banging of the tin drum and chant.

The 4 part combo continues like this in a mounting growth to tension. When the crescendo is reached the combo suddenly stops.

Dead silence.

Zim comes in with a howling solo on the soprano saxophone.
David joins him, singing: ZALWA SEBENZA THENGA UFE
around Zim’s solo notes.

End.

LIGHTING DESIGN: Throughout the buildup section harsh white spots aimed directly into the crowd, switched on and off in the regular monotonous tempo of Aryan’s chant. When the combo reaches its crescendo and stops, the lights go off. A solitary red spot picks Zim up as his haunting solo begins. A solitary blue spot picks up on David as he joins Zim. When they finish both spots fade out. Stage black for a moment and then house lights on for the band bow and applause.

2. SOLO POEM BY MANTOMBI

This spot is entirely up to Mantombi. She can choose to take it solo or ask any one or combination of the group members to accompany her. She will decide this at the sound check.

3. EVENTUALLY (Nakanjalo)

Aryan whispers the text through once.

All the good people
let you down
Eventually
Eventually

All the proud people
On their knees
Eventually
Eventually

All the dead people
Risen up
Eventually
Eventually

Mantombi begins to play on the umrhube.
Warrick joins in on an acoustic percussion instrument.
David sings the text in isiXhosa accompanied by Zim on flute.

Bonke abelungileyo
Baya Kuphoxa
Nakanjalo
Nakanjalo

Bonke abantu ababphakamileyo
Amadolweni
Nakanjalo
Nakanjalo

Bonke abafileyo
Bayo ovuka
Nakanjalo
Nakanjalo

Warrick and David stop.
Zim duets with Mantombi.
Aryan re-states the text in a whisper.

End

4. MY LORD BARGAIN

Solo poem by Aryan

5. FAITH

THE ROCK I BUILT THIS SONG ON
IS FLOWING OUT OF ME

Iliwa indilakayo ku lengoma
Lihla pezukwami

David will sing this acapella in isiXhosa

Mantombi and Zim will join in.

Warrick will join in on percussion instrument

This composition is a gospel stomp it will end the evening’s performance on a very high note, a rousing affair.

Zim will solo on tenor sax.

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 28

1. SOLO POEM BY DAVID Mayekane

David will sing this poem in isiXhosa. It is up to him whether he does it acapella or selects a member/s of the group to accompany him.

2. THRENODY FOR THE VICTIMS OF DEMOCRACY

This is a composition for pre-recorded String Quartet and soprano sax. Zim accompanies the recording. It is up to him whether he chooses to remain inside or outside the time constraints of the composition. Should he decide to extend his playing beyond the pre-recorded composition then he will be joined by Mantombi on either Uhadi or umhrube

3. SOLO POEM BY ARYAN

4. SOLO POEM BY MANTOMBI

5. ACCEPTANCE OF DEATH

This composition is a group improvisation that accompanies a film shot by Aryan in the Stellenbosch urban region. The film includes a soundtrack and the group will face the screen whilst improvising. The improvisation will therefore be a response to both visual and audio stimulus from the projected film.

This composition is inspired by, and dedicated to, Cornelius Cardew.

“7. Acceptance of Death From a certain point of view improvisation is the highest mode of musical activity, for it is based on the acceptance of music’s fatal weakness and essential and most beautiful characteristic -its transcience.

The desire always to be right is an ignoble taskmaster, as is the desire for immortality. The performance of any vital action brings us closer to death; if it didn’t it would lack vitality. Life is a force to be used and if necessary used up. “Death is the virtue in us going to its destination” (Lieh Tzu). ”

Cornelius Cardew
Towards an Ethic of Improvisation

all photos by cecille mella and eran tahor
to download the photos in hi res quality go to www.erantahor.com

November 17, 2009

By Atiyyah Khan

When I interview Aryan Kaganof, I try my best to avoid mentioning that the first time I saw him perform he was naked, suspended from a rope, hanging upside down from the ceiling.

Known for pushing the boundaries as a filmmaker, director, poet, novelist, musician and blogger, Kaganof is thankfully not intimidating at all in person. Although he does suggest that we both stay quiet and rather telepathise the interview in a mind battle.

Kaganof is the architect behind a collaboration that brings together a collection of mind-bending artists in the upcoming Badilisha Poetry X-Change on November 27 and 28 at the Spier Estate. In Kiswahili, “Badilisha” is an expression denoting change, exchange and transformation.

The festival is curated by poet Malika Ndlovu and arts manager Lorelle Viegi.

Kaganof will present his African Noise Foundation, consisting of an explosive line-up of Warrick Sony (Kalahari Surfers), musician and composer Zim Ngqawana, legendary Uhadi bow player Mantombi Matotiyana and Xhosa singer David Mayekane.

“Noise,” he explains, ” is a sign of our culture. It’s everything that people in charge want you not to hear and not to see.” Together the collective hopes to create a space of “healing alchemy”. He says that in putting this piece together, he feels “the second most excited since having a baby”.

Ngqawana, despite being highly revered in the music community, is scarcely seen performing in Cape Town.

“This country has a terrible history of neglecting its great jazz artists while they’re still alive,” says Kaganof. “And I think it’s insane that Zim isn’t playing constantly.”

Describing the musician as a “compositional genius and an improviser” he adds: “It’s a dream come true to put people like Zim and Warrick together because they’ve never worked together before.”

He tells me this story: “I first saw Warrick in Cape Town in 1978 at a club called Scratch (named after Lee “Scratch” Perry) that was one of the few non-racial clubs in the country. I was 15 at the time and he was playing in this band called The Happy Ships.”

Kaganof claims to have seen Sony playing the “scissors” and continues: “My whole aim was bringing him back to those kinds of acoustic instruments.”

Kaganof talks about non-racial clubs during the ’80s as a group of political partygoers all “dancing their way to freedom”.

“I’m still trying to dance my way to freedom,” he confesses.

About the project at the festival, he says: “We don’t want to set limits, everyone is coming in with absolute openness.” This is Kaganof’s way of bringing these hugely diverse artists together, in producing something that could possibly never be seen again.

The African Noise Foundation was originally started in 1999. “It is an umbrella and in that umbrella the personnel can always shift and change, but it’s a way of putting people together in ways that don’t fit within a genre. Putting these artists together was too important not to do.”

more info here

The build-up to Badilisha will include a series of workshops from November 24-26 at various venues in the city. Kaganof will present Lost For Words: Working in Collectives, which will aim to deconstruct poetic conventions and discuss language exhausted of meaning. The festival includes international performers Dorothea Smartt (UK), Warsan Shire (Somalia) and Ngoma Hill (US).

# Check out the Badilisha Poetry X-change on November 27 and 28 at the Spier Estate. Time: 7.30pm. Tel: 021 422 0468. Info: www.badilishapoetry.com

this article first published in tonight.co.za

(view unyazi of the bushveld here)

halim el-dabh is an honorary lifetime member of the african noise foundation

“It’s not a question of Africa or America”
Interview with the saxophonist Zim Ngqawana

Forty-two-year-old Zim Ngqawana studied jazz at the University of Natal before going to the United States to train with the likes of Max Roach and Wynton Marsalis. On his return to South Africa, he toured with Abdullah Ibrahim and Hugh Masekela whilst also developing his own style. His record collection comprises innumerable works by John Coltrane, along with Mozart and the Pakistani musician Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn. Open to everything and in search of spirituality, Zim Ngquawana considers himself as a free man. This practicing Muslim refuses ready-made formulae and labels. On his latest record, Zimphonic Suites, he performs the traditional songs of his ethnic group, the Xhosas. His approach refuses to limit his music to being specifically South African. He rejects local colour whilst at the same time challenging globalisation. He doesn’t play jazz; he plays music. He isn’t African; he’s universal.

What do you think of the older generation of South African jazz musicians, the Chris McGregors or the Winston Mankukus, who died unheard of and at times penniless?
The system always sought to suppress jazz as an art form because jazz addresses important social questions, because it helps you to think and be free. Those musicians constitute my heritage.

How do you answer your critics who accuse you of being too influenced by America, of not being African enough?
It’s not a question of Africa or America. The American masters belong to my people. Duke Ellington is my father. John Coltrane is my father. I have to connect with all the people in the Diaspora who do the same thing as me, who practice the same form of expression, based on the same social conditions. I don’t want to discriminate, or limit myself to South Africa. The world is not South Africa.

Has the country’s opening since 1994 significantly changed South African jazz?
No, because most of the great innovators were around before, and were often in exile. Music and thought has deteriorated since 1994 for economic and political reasons.

What reasons do you mean?
The way life is taken hostage so that people do not realise the meaning of their lives. The modern slavery that exists all over the world, people programmed to sleep, work, and consume. People whom the artists entertain. I’m not here for entertainment’s sake.

Are you angry?
I empathise. I’m not angry anymore, otherwise I wouldn’t play the music I play. Anger is dangerous; it can consume you completely. You have to channel it, to understand it and use it as a stimulant in order to affront life. You can get the best of yourself from it.

Do you ever consider leaving the country?
I have already left, spiritually speaking. Johannesburg remains my base for logistical reasons, a place where I can plan and accomplish other things, such as family life, which I need to stay balanced. When I say family, I mean all people who think and who want to attain positive goals.

Are other jazz musicians a part of your family?
There is no jazz community here. It’s frustrating. That’s why I had such a good time in Paris at the last La Villette jazz festival. I met American musicians, critics, people who were sensitive and aware of what is going on in the world, activists. I also went to visit the dead; I went to see Frederic Chopin and Edith Piaf’s graves.

What do you think of jazz adaptations of traditional maskanda?
There’s no such thing as maskanda or anything else! Music is as free as the air… We live in a technical world where tradition is considered underdeveloped. That’s all nonsense. We need to develop technicality, technology to be compatible everywhere…

Do you think you are better appreciated abroad than at home?
Africa, South Africa, is the only place I have problems in playing my music.

Why?
Because people carry on talking when you play… Africans need to understand their reality and adapt. It’s all very well preaching the African renaissance and not putting it into practice. If you want to be primitive, why carry on living in chic neighbourhoods? We ought to dress in our skins and beads, our traditional clothing, and go to the office in them… Tradition needs to be transformed, reworked to be made compatible with our urban lifestyle, our world, and our reality. We don’t have any other choice: I can’t go to Paris on horseback! We need to rethink things in general, not just music, if we want to play a role in the global village.

this interview first published on africultures.com

In Lagos, after some 25 years non-enforcement of public nuisance laws, the level of noise pollution from the ubiquitous churches of the born-again lunatics is intolerable. They mount the most powerful loudspeakers and from there deafeningly broadcast their prayer meetings, with hand-clapping, singing, drumming, and shouting of “Praise the Lord, Hallelujah!”, “In Jesus name”, etc. And they do so, usually from midnight to dawn, not just on Sundays, but whenever the anti-social devil spirit moves them, thereby subjecting all within earshot to the nightly torture of sleep deprivation. They must believe that their god Jehovah is so deaf that he can hear their desperate prayers only if made in the stillness of deepest night, and loud enough to wake the dead.

Dr. Chinweizu
Black Colonialists: the root of the trouble with Africa
in
New Frank Talk #4

african noise foundation members have infiltrated the ranks of the evangelical alliance of kenya, successfully spreading the noise!

music - joel assaizky
vocal & lyrics - aryan kaganof
video edited by the isidore isou remix collective
3min37sec
june 2009

watch it here

http://www.meanwhile.co.za/MEANWHILE8/?p=321

“The coronal suture of the skull bears a certain similarity to the closely wavy line which the needle of a phonograph engraves on the receiving, rotating cylinder of the apparatus. What if one changed the needle and directed it on its return journey along a tracing which was not derived from the graphic translation of a sound, but existed of itself naturally – well: to put it plainly, along the coronal suture, for example. What would happen?

A sound would necessarily result, a series of sounds, music … Feelings – which? Incredulity, timidity, fear, awe – which of all the feelings here possible prevents me from suggesting a name for the primal sound which would then make its appearance in the world … Leaving that aside for the moment: what variety of lines then, occurring anywhere, could one not put under the needle and try out? Is there any contour that one could not, in a sense, complete in this way and then experience it, as it makes itself felt, thus transformed, in another field of sense?”

Rainer Maria Rilke
Primal Sound
1919

read the complete text here

noisewomb is a project curated by african noise foundation
you can watch it here

Music Today fund raising concert hosted by New Music SA 28th March, Howard College Theatre

Wine was sponsored by the Distel Foundation for the Performing Arts and artists performed without charge.

A world renowned (and controversial) film director creates a piece of music which is to be played by a world renowned guitarist and Durban hardly knows of the event!! But I am not complaining, just pointing out the curiously ever baffling Durban audience ethos that absolutely passeth all understanding. The ever sloppy Durban press need to be upbraided, for a large portion of this continuing vexatious situation must surely rest on their shoulders fairly and squarely. Unless of course, that by making this statement I completely overestimate their importance on Durban’s cultural scene and they carry not an iota of credibility anyway. Then of course, one needs to look to the Music Department of the University itself. Have the students all become so jaded that nothing interests them anymore? And then - touchy subject - one needs to look at the racial demographics of the audience: completely White except for a Black couple and no Indians. Are there no black or Indian students at the University? Are Whites the only racial group interested in progressive music, or is this still regarded as a ‘colonialist pastime’?

I was once again struck by the excellence of the acoustics in the Howard College Theatre!

The event was hosted with professional ease by Fiona Tozer who contributed to the evening with her composition “Snapshots for piano and recorded voice” performed by Catherine Morrow. This ‘streetwise’ performance piece began with Catherine, in jeans, T-shirt, unmarked plastic carry-bag with an assortment of musical paraphernalia - not to mention chewing……gum - slopping onto the stage ready for the shopping mall…percussionist in tow. Snippets of overlaid (mostly female) conversations (in various languages) timed to interweave with the inventive piano narrative began and interjected the performance. Underpinning this interplay was the necessity for dexterity interwoven with a ‘chance factor’ (the steel pipes placed on the piano strings) which I found intriguing. Some wonderful melodies emerged between the latter half of the ‘snapshots’. I wondered whether it was not Fiona Tozer’s intention to evoke the sense of travelogue where the shopping mall (more so than the airport) becomes the unifying factor of what has undoubtedly now become a global village.

The next piece I really enjoyed was Andrew Beall’s composition ”Song for Almah” for marimba (Ilse Minnie) and cello (Jennifer Cox). The warm integrated tone of these two instruments wafted across the auditorium with a clarity and perfect pitch that was aurally beyond reproach. I particularly appreciated the rhythm and ‘drive’ within the piece where the two exquisite melodies, never pulling apart yet stretching the boundaries of exploration in parallel universes, sought to transgress those boundaries by locating points of harmony: space creating space, relating with ease through a common time frame, a win-win situation. An enlightening and truly worthy tribute to Almah.

And then there was Syd Kitchen performing Aryan Kaganof’s “Blues for G string”. What I found most ‘contrasting’ about this performance in particular was the musicians involvement with his instrument: a Mervyn Davis custom built wonder guitar with banjo-lyre-like influences that leant to the performance a uniqueness of style that lifted this manifestation into the extraordinary. Here, Kitchen enveloped a refreshing ‘oneness’ with his instrument which transmuted into an authentic link with ‘self’. The performer, thus so well grounded, confidently launches himself into the given framework (the composition) in virtually any direction and succeeds. The interplay of musical improvisation connects with intent and ease of open-minded interplay and the musician gains an energy that he imbibes back into his craftsmanship becoming that rare muscial magus one is indeed privileged to witness. However, the launchpad, so artfully provided by Kaganof (whose own commitment to the four minute event is evidenced by him flying up from Cape Town and spending the afternoon with Syd Kitchen in rehearsal/discussion) took absolute precedence within the integrity of sovereignty, while allowing the artist/performer the utmost freedom of expression: the bluesy tone, subtly framing Kaganof’s oeuvre of melancholy, a pensiveness, with a repeated note, echoing, founding…running through the sub terrain of Kitchen’s skilled foreplay. I was further struck by what has become for me an added insight into Kaganof’s work - whether directing a film, creating a painting, music, acting, organising the Kagablog - his absolute humanity tied in with an innate creative gift: to inspire nothing but the best from (himself and) his collaborators.

this review first appeared on helgé’s website

all photos by fiona tozer
you can see more photos by fiona of this nmsa event here

“At the beginning of electronic music, some German studios claimed that they could make every sound that a natural instrument could make - only better. They then discovered that all their sounds were marked by a certain uniform sterility. So they analysed the sounds made by clarinets, flutes, violins, and found that each note contained a remarkably high proportion of plain noise; actual scraping, or the mixture of heavy breathing with wind or wood: from a purist point of view this was just dirt, but the composers soon found themselves compelled to make synthetic dirt - to ‘humanize’ their compositions.”

Peter Brooks “The Empty Space” (1968: 74, London, Penguin Books)

download the bohemian dub here

it’s heavy!
brought to you by the african noise foundation
we promise nothing
we bring the noise!

joel assaizky - music and all instruments
kaganof - vocal and lyrics
recorded in parkhurst at the a nul dubh studio, 2005