Sonic formations: third note

Listening to an exhibition, listening as foregrounded – listening to infrastructure; Kunsthalle Bern and its walls, floors, air, ceiling, people, its exterior – listening to oneself listening, your insides taking in the sound, the friction or harmony that is produced, the emotions that come to the surface, listening to the vibrations, to the reverberations. Sound demands an occupation. Exhibition as a live album. Third note as liner notes. What informs the meaning you make of the encounter?

Verse 1 /

Ahhh ahh! (‘hhhh…’hhhh…’hhhh)
There’s something (thing…thing…thing)
Moving, and we’re not sure (‘sho…’sho…’sho)
Where it’s coming from (‘from…’from…’from)

Chorus /

An echo is an itinerant sound, gathering, changing, morphing, shedding – a spatial and temporal encounter.¹ An echo grows and also recedes. An echo is a time-based encounter – the echo can be used as a critical metaphor for temporal and spatial change of songs, stories, rumours and more. In this instance, let us stick to song. I have deployed the echo as metaphor of a spatial and temporal change. Think about O Mary, Don’t You Weep, Don’t You Mourn – the song’s links to the legacy of slavery in the United States, its many renditions and performances over time by Aretha Franklin, Nat King Cole, The Caravans and The Artist Formerly Known as Prince to name a few. Its first known recording is in 1915.² Its meandering, its undocumented until this recording by the Fisk Jubilee Singers to which a legacy of slavery comes as orality, as modes of address, each time the intonation echoes instrument – this formulation of echo as chorus or idea of song that keeps echoing through, echo that calls time differently, this thing keeps moving, carrying its carriage, taking the form of kwaito, national anthems, hymns, jazz, like an imbibing echo.

The Brother Moves On’s song Umthandazo Wamangenge is written by jazz musician Thandi Ntuli, inspired by Kwaito, specifically Tkzee’s songs which often included the words nkosi sikelele which is South Africa’s national anthem adapted from Enoch Sontonga’s Christian hymn Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika from 1897.³

Adlib /

I say, the bridge is over, the bridge is over, biddy-bye-bye!
The bridge is over, the bridge is over, hey, hey!
The bridge is over, the bridge is over, biddy-bye-bye!
The bridge is over, the bridge is over

The weight of a lineage floating like a dandelion. Songs echoing through various political and socio-economic times, its pull morphing to the times. Stella Chiwase’s chachimurenga echoes links to its meaning and relevance over time, from Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle against colonialism to South African apartheid and various calls for liberation in the region. For Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Gerard Sekoto’s 1959 album comes in as a sample – she encountered these songs decades after this album in a school choir without a direct link to Sekoto. Here it is reconfigured, gathering and moving through you and beyond.

Bridge /

Listening to oneself listening. Listening to emotions, and frictions of emotions. And then one has to decide what those frictions of emotions are. What is the tension they are generating, the rub between them. And then one has to name them-naming the parameters of emotions because you want to get the modulations of emotion. Listening to the act of your own listening, but also how this bounces back from the other, most of the times that’s what it is all about.⁴

A formulation from Kodwo Eshun as a guide, a tool, a citation that appears again and again but differently each time; as a bridge in a song, a technical instrument for thinking about embodied practices over years. It has appeared in a text, two lectures, a story, a sonic essay and so far three exhibitions. Embodied practices accept that the practitioner is not neutral and therefore the work carries with it an imprint of its making – a social and culturally embedded making and thus works as moves on the world. Listening is a practice of being self-reflexive while reading and inhabiting the world.

Verse 2 /

Basimana ba ramodumela
ba re ba mbhona
ba thlaba lekhwara
Khwara le tzheke,
Tzheke mphe metsi Ke nwe ka lefhiso,
Lefhiso la barwa,
Barwa baile fhe?
Ba ile o tzoma,
Khwarana yeela,
O lla e rene? E re ke nondhe, ke nondhe thloho,
Mala le mohodu, le zekhwedyekhwethe!
Zekhwedyekhwethe!

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¹ LaBelle, B. 2010, Acoustic territories: Sound culture and everyday life, Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
² Read more here – and here.
³ Sontonga composed the first two stanzas of Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika for his school choir in 1987. The song was first performed in 1899 at the ordination service of Reverend Mboweni, the first Tsonga Methodist Priest to be ordained.
Additional verses to the anthem were later added by the renowned IsiXhosa national poet, Samuel Mqhayi and the song was first recorded on October 16, 1923, in London. By 1925 Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika had become the official song of the African National Congress (ANC), and became the country’s national anthem in 1994. The song was adopted as Zambia’s national anthem in 1960. In Tanzania, then Tanganyika, the song was translated into Swahili, Mungu ibariki Afrika, and was also adopted as its national anthem. It was also adopted in Zimbabwe as Ishe Komborera Afrika from independence in 1980 until 1994, and for less than a month after independence, it was used as Namibia’s national anthem.
⁴ Kodwo Eshun, Interview for Mediatec, [online video], 1999, as found here.

Generously supported by Kultur Stadt Bern and HKB Musik – Sound Arts: