Sampha's new album
THE READING LIST
58 Years to the Treason Trial, Keleketla! Library. I have been doing some side reading early in the mornings and late in the evenings researching alternative education models, trying to bring the idea of knowledge production outside the university system within closer reach as the education crisis in our country mounts. What do we skilled middle-classers with a bit of extra time and a need to serve others do? I’m reading 58 Years to the Treason Trial, a brilliant publication that uses history and art as a catalyst for engagement with social, economic and political conditions of young people, with interviews, interactive exercises for the reader, drawings, posters and a realistic map for developing spaces that could potentially serve as alternative modes of sharing knowledge. (MB)
Paulo Nazareth, artecontemporanealtda.blogspot.co.za. I recently came across the work and interventions of multidisciplinary Brazilian artist Paulo Nazareth. Part-Italian and part-Krenak, with some ancestry from the African continent as well, Nazareth is on a perpetual quest to trace his identity, while unearthing past- and present-day slave practices. The tools in his arsenal include performance (at Art Basel in Miami Beach, Nazareth sold bananas from a VW Microbus as a statement on the art market), walking (he once walked from Brazil to the United States), photography and the collection of souvenirs from his travels. He documents these travels at cadernosdeafrica.blogspot.co.za. Some of his work is currently showing at the South-South exhibition currently on at the Goodman Gallery Cape Town. (KS)
THE PLAY LIST
Sampha — Process: As an ageing cool kid, new amazing artists don’t come to me as quickly as they used to, but I think Sampha came just in time. I first heard his effortless raised-octave chant “what you say to me”, on Solange’s runaway hit, Don’t Touch My Hair, although he has also worked with Kanye West, Drake and Jessie Ware, among others. This British underdog has now come out with Process, his first solo studio album, and the international build-up isn’t disappointing. It’s wide in sonic range, making a case for music that isn’t made for commercial success, born of purity and immediately healing. I don’t know what genre the collection is but it’s beautiful and urgent and now. (MB)
New Sector Movements — Download This. I remember once being at a friend’s house. After some hours of copious drinking and frantic swapping of files, a robbery took place. For my feeble attempts at resisting it, I landed at some clinic for the fixing up of cuts and bruises. The last thing I remember playing from that night was New Sector Movements’ Never Been Closer, before blacking out. Later, I remember thinking that the robbers had awesome taste, or at least great timing, for walking in on such a musically sublime moment. (KS)