Music indaba to reimagine Africa
21 June 2005
This year's New Music Indaba, to be held during the National Arts Festival in July, is to examine the music of Africa under the theme Reimagining Africa.
The annual indaba is held under the auspices of New Music SA, the South African section of the International Society for Contemporary Music.
This year, indaba participants will be taken on a virtual tour of the continent, from Cape to Cairo and Kampala to Tangiers, examining how composers construct their African identities.
In the course of 13 concerts some 40 composers and improvisers, mostly African but with a representation from Europe and North America, will be featured. There will be a large number of South African premières and eight world premières, including four new bow pieces.
The Enoch Sontonga centenary will be marked by a set of 13 variations on Sontonga's best-known work, Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika. A liberation song during the apartheid years and now South
Africa's national anthem, Sontonga's hymn will be presented in different versions throughout the Indaba, with one per concert.
Uganda's Justinian Tamusuza will be composer in residence, and award-winning Liberian soprano Dawn Padmore will provide solo vocal highlights. South African composers are to contribute to "the final phase" of the Bow Project, the third in the series, with a number of new commissions by the Sontonga Quartet and electronic remixes by local DJs.
Jill Richards and indaba director Michael Blake will perform new compositions for piano. There will also be new pieces in the final phase of the Bow Project, and contemporary South African compositions for classical guitar played by Derek Gripper.
The internatioonal contingent includes the Stockholm Saxophone Quartet and POW Ensemble, headed by Dutch electronics master Luc Houtkamp. Benguela will represent Cape Town's electronic underground.
Free Indaba concerts include two surveys of electronic
music from all over Africa as well as the top guest ensembles performing new work from the indaba's composer workshops.
The National Arts Festival is sponsored by the Eastern Cape government, Standard Bank, the National Arts Council, the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund and the SABC.
For more information, visit the National Arts Festival website.
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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