Walled: Under The Bridge

Pinked: A Series

“I am not going back to the township”.

Among the most dreaded personages of my childhood were those old toppies my mother called oSkhohlela.

That common, hard core, scar ridden face stud with a single arm who rides an ungreased bicycle every day selling mogodu on credit, in company of whining monstrous green flies.

Yeah, that brother. uMpukane.

Then, there are those who seem to always throw phlegm like pennies into a pond. More so when fucked on some hostel brew stewed from KING KONG Mthombomela mixed with battery acid or other delicacies.

I heard in Klerksdorp they call it Skipa’seantekana.

They can otherwise be ‘your common sip-thieves at every stokvel - aboMaminya; or those ones who incessantly suck their teeth long after that holy communion of iSkobho – aboMavungula.

Hilarious names when one comes to think of them, but an epithet like Makhafula - the spitter - is quite a glaring approximation to one overtly vulgar gesture common down any township street.

aBomakhafula.

I mean, these guys can spit.

Every time they spat was like a grand moment at some spitting Olympics.

We used to joke that some of them could hit a bird dead perched on any branch with their bullet spit, without exhausting a glance.

There is however, a lure of the vulgar that each mind seems to possess; an inclination towards the depraved and even a psychotic yearning for decay.

However, ukuKhafula always remaining an exclamatory gesture of disgust, repulse and a rejection of that which is not palatable in any sense, also can be an acknowledgement of the event of contact with the unpalatable – therefore an equilibrial response in essence. 

We spit out that which feels like a sordid memory, a sort of mandatorily wiped memory; discarded due to decay or a burning sensation that requires release – but a memory whose existence we affirm nonetheless.

The act becomes a removal of any contamination that inhabits our prime faculty of speech - the mouth; an end to halitosis – all fumes that drench our garbage verbatim of social conditioning and drone responsibilities.

Still I wonder, what fuels Makhafula Vilakazi’s regurgitative demeanour, considering that the mouth is associated with a furnace?

What burns within him?

Or rather, what is he attempting to set ablaze?

Why the implicit leniency towards profanity?

Profane speech or obscene words, being reliable disgust elicitors curiously tend to cluster around body-related subject matter, interestingly so that even psychologists have been grappling with the science behind this human inclination.

And obviously Makhafula is not inventing swear words, but merely utilizing an existing lexicon of language developed by an entire species to relate ideas of disgust.

Profanity seems to be a way of sentencing certain undesirables to death.

Some writers argue that this semantic field that spawned taboo words across the world's languages is death and disease, and the human reaction to death and disease; and also the perpetual belief in the vice that the ‘body’ is damned evil.

But, I am curious to know why does Makhafula swear?

Maybe this will help me understand the high appreciation of his expressive poetry throughout the country, and mostly among urban youths.

Maybe I will eventually understand why people are drawn to that which they cannot exclaim themselves, especially when bound by self-inflicted moral constraints of a religious nature.

By some dark luck, I might discover that profanity is 'the magic fuel' that ignites minds into frenzied furnaces of resistance and rebellion.

Or maybe, just maybe, I will be treading that ecclesiastical path of commodifying South African swearwords, the beginnings of patenting languages and dialects – like the Americans have done with words like nigga, bitch, hoe and all the like.

So, seriously, will we be hearing the word ‘Sfebe’ on the airwaves from now to eternity, weaved within baritonic slurs sheared against a fossilised race’s scabby skinned ears?

I guess it is true that ‘Crazy, is a good uniform’.

Makhafula Vilakazi, who is in fact a character from of Matodzi Ramashia’s earlier poem of the same name, has lived and breathed township air since his birth.

He admits to write about what constitutes the existence of the depraved, ‘heavily influenced by the pathetic state of my jobless people languishing in townships without dignity.

And perhaps Zunglish and Tsotsi-taal are best suited linguistic devices for telling such stories, but he basically writes as he speaks.

In the language of uKulanzana or uKugwarana, he speaks on behalf of the insulted member of our tattered social fabric, the rejects and losers if you may.

Much of the profanity, although common place for kasie expression; still remains a subset of a language's lexicon that is generally considered to be very impolite, rude or offensive, but that is the language suited to emasculate the criminal Makhafula from every turn and line written in his attack.

Matodzi recalls that, ‘the one writer who had a real profound impact on me was Oswald Mtshali. I read his poem "an abandoned bundle" when I was still in high school. I really connected with that poem. As time went by I got to know of other legends of the word, Sipho Sepamla, Wally Serote, Chris van Wyk, bra-Ike Muila (this is where I learned that poem can also be written in tsotsitaal), Vonani Bila, Lesego Rampolokeng, Keorapetse Kgositsile.

And all these poets have been dubbed ‘dissident poets’ by literary critics and scholars.

I think Makhafula fits that bill, somehow.

Even though grossly unnerved by new trends of poetic expression in South Africa where ‘young poets these days are really ignorant of the great literary tradition that they should fit into’, Makhafula seems confronted by cloned expressions from the American literary tradition.

‘Rather than being inspired by South African writers to write South African stories a lot of young poets are really just mimicking Americans. As a result you get a lot of Saul William accents, Saul William dramatic pauses, basically a lot of flowery meaningless bombastic bullshit that say nothing about who we are, about our struggle, our triumphs...

But why does offensive expression seem to draw more attention than the floral language of contemporary poetics?

One might say Makhafula not only revels in the relationship that he have with words, with language, with writing, but he also do not privilege "standard" English over more colloquial or vernacular language.

In a conversation we had at The Afrikan Freedom Station he revealed that he is not interested in ‘message poetry’.

‘I write poems based on how I feel at a point in time. I am inspired by people, their struggles, their pain, love, anger, betrayal, hope and despair. I do not have a specific agenda’.

A seasoned performer who has graced stages from Poetry Africa and Day of The Writer to name a few, he still prefers performing ‘ekasie’ because his poetry feels immediate to the vulgarity of township existence.

Though he has enjoyed impressive collaborations with musician Sumthing Soweto, vocalist Khany Magubane and a number of Jazz outfits from Soweto, his musical influences can be said to be vastly rooted in jazz.

His poetry is fast becoming that chronicle of lives in disarray, a testament of the assault on romantic unions and turbulent family dynamics that characterise ‘the lives of black folks’ in an age of material gratification and disregard for human dignity.

Those who acquiesce to his expression of truth about township life remain his most staunch fans, and I hope you can also join the movement to demystify an overly romanticised life of depravity which he so laments.

And maybe even the puritanical will also listen to his album I’m Not Going Back To The Township and decide on a course of action to change the tide of obscurity shrouding young hopes through a life of deferred dreams.

You can follow Makhafula Vilakazi on

https://www.facebook.com/MakhafulaVilakaziPoetry

Remembering Afghani

Remembering Afghani is a conversation between editor and lecturer Moagi M. Matsie and filmmaker Paul Zisiwe. It is discussion based on a film titled Homeless In Afghani, directed and filmed by Paul Zisiwe in 2010. The conversation is centred on the filmmaker’s memories of the subjects of his film, his relationship with them and his eternal quest to track some of the homeless people he knew as a young man. The visual design is a narrative tool devised by Paul Zisiwe, which aims to also entrench the idea of ‘memory as super-impositions or collectives of super-impositions’ within each and every mind that is interested in the recollections of experiences and events.

A Peek Inside The Heart – An Exhibition

Steve Kwena Mokwena remains an enigma in South African cultural scene, an artist held in high regard by his peers and admirers alike.

A filmmaker, intellectual and activist – Steve, father of three, was born in Soweto on the 16th of December 1967.

He is 3rd of six children and he grew up during those turbulent ‘Dying Days of White Rule’, so he carries the terrorised memory and trauma of being adolescent in 1980’s South Africa.

He admits: “I was a child when 1976 happened and I was in my youth when the townships went aflame in the 1980’s. I came of age when the country was changing. Like most people my age, I have a childhood that belongs under Apartheid, and now I am raising my children in a so-called new country. I think this gives me a unique vantage point. I know the world can and should be changed and my art communicates that.”

The exhibition, currently hosted at The Afrikan Freedom Station, a jazz club he created together with his wife and partner Nirvana Singh, is a personal search for the artist himself.

The Afrikan Freedom Station however, has become the epicentre of alternative art appreciation in Johannesburg, and the exhibition here is something more than an object of decorum, it is in itself ‘a peek inside Kwena’.

It is an extension of the artistic and cultural revolution I believe ‘The Station’ is conducting for and among many progressive thinkers of the city, and I bet Jack Kerouac would write a damn good poem about the vibe at the place.

There are those common pubs and eateries in gentrified zones of Johannesburg which obviously are vying for the market The Station caters for, but as I have witnessed, the patrons of this place are more than a market, they are cultured observers of an ever evolving artistic landscape.

And they are loyal patrons of the arts in general.

They are connoisseurs of literature, fine art, music, dance and I cannot even delve into the spirituality of some mystics I have encountered there.

Maybe they are the appropriate audience for this self-exorcism Steve has undergone through this series.

It seems that most people are familiar with only a narrow range of Steve’s works, mainly oil on canvas and predominantly film, but this recently exhibition of drawings: a series titled ‘A peek Inside The Heart’, is marked by a more than usual indifference to the theme of drawing itself, more because these entries of erratic quality and less than desirable levels of self-analysis, become mirrors of a being or beings in their own confined spaces.

Would this be Steve’s rendition of Martin’s sense of isolation?

Or is Steve discovering his own isolation within the narrative provided by Martin’s experiences?

But as Steve puts it, “I was taken by his delicate and lyrical treatment of the subject of love, longing, and sexual desire. Instead of the usual heavy political imagery that we have become accustomed too, he caressed the page with the simple truth of a young man locked up when he could have loved, laughing and fornicating. I just loved the peek inside the softer side of a freedom fighter.’

Incidentally, these images lay bare another man’s tattered soul or are a resolute introspective and self-reflective interpretation of a poetry anthology of the same title by Martin Sehlapelo, a former MK guerrilla who was once an inmate at the infamous Robben Island, who I knew little to nothing about prior to the exhibition.

The exhibition feels like a voyeuristic snoop at a nude, a sudden and uncomfortable invasion of privacy.

Saddening is the observation that the object that seems most confined in these sketches of bodies is the heart, and this symbol makes for turbulent imagery to digest.

The caging of what should be at best our symbolic faculty of love seems to be complicit in yet a furthering of psychic boundaries which even our bodies cannot withstand.

The works articulate a sense of disparate alone-ness, which borders on traditions of frugal portraiture sketches, the lean nurture of detail which can at a glance be misconstrued for a print while still emitting the slight of the craftsman’s touch.

Yet the artist seems never preoccupied with other than the figures and their representation within the blankness of a sterile page.

These forlornly solitary subjects, even in their togetherness, embody that eternal curse of solitude that persists within any societal relations.

In this body of work, a unique form of expressionism that draws upon some ground-breaking works of Dumile Feni, Matsemela Manaka and a number of Steve’s contemporaries, seems to be crystallizing.

Through this work, I believe Steve has probably become a catalyst of an emergent artistic idiom that puts the spotlight of the reclusive nature of the modern South African’s memory, and this venture is proving influential among contemporary South African artists.

Although some of the recurrent themes in Kwena’s work, such as dance and music, genre scenes and portraits, have been explored and presented in the past; the body, which nonetheless holds an equally important place, has elicited a great deal of interest for the artist with this series.

The characterized figurative elements that derive from a long tradition of exploring the human form, never seems to have softened his approach in order to pander to the sentimentalist demands of the white-dominated art market in South Africa.

He denudes his figures as a respite for his eventual lament at the cells we have constructed for our inner selves.

In fact, Steve is quite an affable cosmopolitan man, so the morbidity of the exhibitions speaks not of the man himself but his observations of a social conditioning that is resultant from prolonged incarceration within and without the social constructs of identity.

The series exudes a sort of despondency about the present human condition in general, but further replicates those noble collective ideals within entities, bodies, ‘people’, their being as self-aware to themselves and through others and through love.

Or perhaps the contrary is true, that the pieces are an exuberant exhalation of the spirit told through yet the constant of solitude, as often alone we find others and ourselves.

Heart-warming and sobering, the artworks signal a creation of a formal artistic language that will present a social narrative for seclusion, depravity and despondency that plagues many people living under the present global democratic dispensations.

The Station, also providing studio space for artists, to exorcise and expose their inner most emotions, is becoming that alternative gallery most black artists have been seeking. So, do pay it a visit once in a while and celebrate the legacy and immense contribution this exceptionally talented artist, and other artists, musicians, writers and lovers of art are making towards Afrikan culture as a whole.

And I hope for those who can afford to see these pieces grace their homes will shelter these reclusive stories stencilled by a hand of an artist worthy of his craft.

I had the pleasure of corresponding and posing some questions to the artists after visiting the exhibition and the outcome was as inspiring as the man’s work itself.

A PEEK INSIDE (WHY HAVE WE NOT BEEN SHOWN THINGS LIKE THIS?)

An interview

•           Tell me how others describe your work versus how you see it? Do people understand it or do you constantly have to explain it?

I learned early on my path as an artist that art, especially visual art, does not need too much explaining. I started painting realistically, doing portraits, which I enjoy and still do when a compelling spirit takes me there. But recently I have been enjoying doing more abstract work. This is work that seeks to express a feeling or a set of feelings that I have. This work, which I do mainly on paper using inks, has taken me on a different trajectory. The conversations that I have had have been about our bodies, what they remember, what they have suffered and how they have been shaped by what they have gone through. We live through our bodies. We love though our bodies and our bodies have relationship with the city. I found a young man sitting quietly looking at the series of pictures – A peek inside the heart – and he asked me; “Bra Kwena, why have we not been shown things like this?” I knew then that something delightful unspeakable has been disrobed, laid bare and it is moving someone to ask a deep question. I think people understand and relate to my images. Many times people say things to me about my paintings and I am totally surprised. They point to something I have not consciously thought about and I enjoy that. I enjoy surprising myself, and I enjoy being surprised by a work of art that I have created.

•           Tell me about your artistic aesthetic. What inspires you, what formed your outlook?

I am inspired by life and everything around me. I am always rummaging in my world for things that have an unusual clarity about something obvious, yet not fully processed. I paint, I draw, I write and I make films. Most of the time I am grappling with something that is not clear, not fully explained or easily explainable. The process of making art gives me clues and insights and I follow my instincts. If there is a theme that cuts across all my work, it the question of memory. How we remember? What we remember? How we are remembered and how our bodies remember?  Drawing and painting, allows me to suspend my intellectual side and follow what feels right and what reveals itself through the process of making marks. It is an immersion into the murky waters of ones sub conscious mind – in the pit of one’s spirit, so to say. That is my playground. It is not always pretty and not everything it yields can be hung in someone’s living room. But what it yields is a detailed internal dairy of my search.

I am not the first to paint and draw. My spirituality is the foundation of all my art. My aesthetic sensibilities are influenced by jazz and historical images of black life in this civilization. Black culture is you like. I used to be drawn to pictures of anguish and oppression, and as I grow older, I am trying to find power in the soft side of being a person in this world. Yes we suffer still, but we also play, sing, dance and make love. I look there for traces of what our ancestors were about and how they saw themselves. I try and take the feelings of what I see and give them some form of representations. Thankfully, there are many great South African painters and artists who have come before and those alive today. There is no shortage of influences. My struggle is to find that way of saying something that is uniquely me. Over and above the challenge of mastering ones craft, lies the bigger challenge of making work that matters – images that speak that don’t have to be spoken for.

•           Give me an example of obstacles you have overcome or are currently struggling with when it comes to creating the work and exhibiting it.

The country is racist and unequal and the black artists don’t get as much play and recognition as they should. The few that get attention are almost always pulled to make work that is pleasing for people in the ‘art world.’ Their work will never be seen or enjoyed by people who come from where they come from. I don’t come from the art world. I came to art to heal myself and to grow myself. No one or nothing really stops me from doing what I want to do. Sure there are financial constraints and getting the attention of the collectors, and the respect from high street galleries and museums would be great. But I will not wait for that to create. I create what I can with what I have. I rarely work with conventional materials and I pick up my stuff to make art with everywhere I go. I have transformed enough disused doors, cabinets and all sorts broken pieces of wood into artworks that I have sold, to affirm that my task is to create. Thankfully, I don’t have to be discovered by someone to be exhibited. When I had enough work to show the world, I created my own gallery. The Afrikan Freedom Station is now a home for a lot of great artists. We have the pleasure of creating in a community of people and more and more the work finds itself in the homes and offices of people we know and like.

•           Which artists, both locally and internationally, inspire you work?

I am influenced by the work of a jazz painter, Bruni Sablan. I have always loved Sekoto and I am always moved by Dumile Feni, Ezrom Legae and I have now discovered Cecil Skotnes. I really do like how William Kentridge works with drawings, creating stories and internal worlds that make you think. These are just few. I am influenced a lot by the younger artists around me. I particularly like the work of Mzwandile Buthelezi who has opened my eyes to the power of ink.

•           Why does your work utilize a variety of media at any given point of your creative process?

I use what I have to make my art. I use everything. I love painting with oils and acrylics and mostly on boards and used wooded surfaces. I started doing this because I could not afford proper canvasses. I soon found out that these old surfaces with memory suited me more. Now I love the simplicity and austerity of paper and ink. I am also exploring print-making. I don’t have hard and fast rule. I spend a lot of time reading and looking at images. I look at videos of what I like from the Internet and I learn what I can. I always do what feels right, what is not forced. I need that. I don’t have a formal art training, I learn as I go. I do believe in learning things properly. It makes expression so much more meaningful. I need to express and release so I prepare my spaces (my home and the gallery) to make it easy for me to execute. I can move from a giant portrait of Fela Kuti on an old black board to an intimate print of lovers holding each other. I allow myself a lot of freedom and room to play. Some things are strong and they move people. And some things don’t. But that’s okay, I make the art for me first, and when it connects, I feel very blessed. Like all artists, I wish for nothing more than to create good work, to connect with people and hopefully make a living doing what gives me most meaning.

Also check out

The Afrikan Freedom Station

https://www.facebook.com/AfrikanFreedomStation

A Peek Inside A Political Prisoner’s Heart

https://www.facebook.com/MartinSehlapeloPoetry

Steve Kwena Mokwena

https://www.facebook.com/stevekwena.mokwena/about

God Restricts Evil Expressions Naturally - GREEN

Cassettes and Vinyls

The past couple of days have been steeped in indulgent nostalgia, I must say. Being reacquainted with the old in the sense of that return to the past through silhouettes of memory, brought back the sweet scent of dust on my uncle’s LP’s and the pride I felt when I got my first Walkman.

I didn’t know much about the technicalities of the recording mechanisms and formats of vinyl and cassettes back when I was younger, but I later discovered that vinyl records and cassettes are analogue recordings, as opposed CDs which are digital recordings. And audio connoisseurs have been grappling with issues of preference for the sound produced by these recordings, with some vying for CD’s and other digital recordings while there are disciples of the old analogue sound produced by vinyl formats.

The vinyl format has always been popular among hi-fi enthusiast, DJ’s, collectors and music aficionados. These people consider the vinyl record to be the ‘true release’ and the general opinion remains that the format has a richer and more interesting sound. Sadly, I cannot vouch for that because the equipment I used to play these recordings was always of a bad quality.

Ok, over the years, I soon learnt that in my home stereo, the CD player takes a digital recording and converts it to an analogue signal, which is fed to my amplifier which then raises the voltage of the signal to a level powerful enough to drive the speaker.

Then I had to come to grips with the science that says that a digital recording is not capturing the complete sound wave. That it is approximating it with a series of steps.

Eventually I discovered that the grooves carved into the vinyl record mirror the original sound's waveform. That meant that no information was lost. That must be a good idea, I thought.

But as is, I still have that indelible pleasure of listening to these two formats on some even worse equipment.

Yet I cannot help but feel privileged that I still have a collection of vinyls and cassettes and memories of the rituals associated with playing them.

And more so, I am glad I have the ‘flawed’ nostalgia that entails the rewind sounds of the cassette player; a marvellously lulling aura, filled with a speaking hiss or that shrilling screech that leaves one temporarily cringing.

I loved the crackle of the needle on the vinyl; the dust bursts that huff through the speakers, as well as the scratches, the loops that accidentally result from them.

All these are what I recall about the beauty of these formats. Nothing technical really, because I still haven’t the pleasure of advanced equipment to use for listening to these magnificent recordings beside that aged Blaupunkt Turntable at Uncle Gatyeni’s house.

Affinities with certain songs and musicians which my uncle listened to, is inextricably tied to recollections of family gatherings and life events that are tattooed to my mind. Those concomitant sounds have moulded my musical appreciations, sonic preferences and aural leniency.  

Above all the minor pleasures of the soundscapes I encounter with Cassettes and Vinyls, the ultimate physical experience on the other hand of holding a piece of art in itself as the affirmation that the formats are vintage and worth preserving for generations to come.

The mainstream vinyl renaissance is taking the music industry by storm, and an upswing in vinyl sales has seen a lot of musician, contemporary and classic have their music resuscitated into an invigorating arena of vintage exposure.

The resurgence of LPs "is largely attributed to the type of people who place a premium on traditional recording formats and the overall listening experience," says Bloomberg.

From re-mastered releases of old Jazz classics, to artists such as Erykah Badu, I love Trains and Godspeed You Black Emperor pressing vinyls for their fans, in a world of disposable digital files, and utilitarian CDs (that just end up getting ripped anyway), a record is more and more becoming a beautiful object to collect.

Undeniably, the audio on vinyl records has become more nuanced, more natural, and more continuous. Warmer, purer, richer. Well - “truer” is the adjective that vinyl records advocates use, and with that I cannot disagree. Take for instance the orchestral verve that encapsulates Coltrane’s Solos on Kulu Se Ma, or Miles’ In A Silent Way with its sibilant yet verbose strokes of keys wailing in what could be a cathedral.

Even the thudding rhythms crashing after kettle drum rolls stand bold in an air that seems claustrophobic to the sound itself.

Another factor which contributed to the attractiveness of the vinyl format was the ability to record music from vinyl directly onto cassette.

Such escapades made one a tad famous among his adolescent peers especially when these mixtapes became sort after by ladies.

So vinyl created some first mixing legends, DJ’s and sample fanatics.

And being fan of turntablists such as J Dilla, who in his time developed a crazy record collection, which he utilised to craft his anthems; I think it also time that musicians start to collect each other on vinyl for sampling purposes.

I think a good sample is as good as its source, so let’s get scratching but keeping the wax intact and shelved for posterity and of course, nostalgia.

Now sitting here, watching the needle trace the groove, Isaac Hayes’ signature keys and pedalled guitars sling past my ear.

Sibilant transitions provide a tremendous amount of goose bumps after a hiatus with a melody’s sweep.

I wonder if my collecting passion supersedes my musical appreciation sometimes, but either way, the act of hoarding art is one of my weaknesses.

It is weakness my ears’ gluttony can never shake.