Articles
PASS Pop-UP in Paris
From September 17 – 19, the Pan African Space Station (PASS) will Pop-UP inside the gallery of Fondation Cartier, Paris with live programming that explores the past-present-future of Congolese music cultures. This intervention is part of the exhibition Beauté Congo – 1926-2015 – Congo Kitoko.
View of the exhibition Beauté Congo – 1926-2015 – Congo Kitoko. Photo: Luc Boegly
Participating artists in the PASS Pop-UP in Paris include Ray Lema, Elikia M’bokolo, Syllart Records, Afrikaada Magazine, Baloji, Shenguen Shegue, Kongo Astronauts, Christine Eyene. Contributions will also be beamed in from New York, Montreal and Kinshasa by the writers collective Moziki littéraire, from Lubumbashi by Centre d’Art Picha, and from Bogota by Afro-Columbian music pioneers Palenque Records.
To experience the three days of conversations, DJ performances and mini-concerts tune in here between 16:00 – 22:00 (CET) each day-night.
Gospel Christian Porn Rap: FOKN Bois
This installment of Stories about Music in Africa was produced and performed by Ghanaian rap-duo FOKN Bois (Wanlov the Kublor and M3NSA). Stories about Music in Africa is an ongoing project of the Pan African Space Station.
Category: Articles, Pass Blog, Video
Tags: FOKN Bois, M3NSA, Stories About Music in Africa, Wanlov the Kublor
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Revolting Songs: Neo Muyanga
This installment of Stories about Music in Africa features South African musician and composer Neo Muyanga. Stories about Music in Africa is an ongoing project of the Pan African Space Station. Special thanks to Brundyn+ Gallery and Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism.
Category: Articles, Pass Blog, Video
Tags: Neo Muyanga, Stories About Music in Africa
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A Comet is Coming: Shabaka Hutchings & The Brother Moves On
This installment of Stories about Music in Africa features Shabaka Hutchings and The Brother Moves On (Raytheon Moorvan, Siyabonga Mthembu, Zelizwe Mthembu, Simphiwe Tshabalala and Ayanda Zalekile) Stories About Music In Africa is a series of Pan African Space Station transmissions, concert-lectures, recorded at the Chimurenga headquarters in Cape Town as well as satellite locations across the African world.
Category: Articles, Pass Blog, Video
Tags: Shabaka Hutchings, Stories About Music in Africa, The Brother Moves On
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Wanlov the Kubolor live at Slave Church, PASS 2009
From the PASS archives, Wanlov, one half of FOKN Bois, with band back in ’09. Makganwana Mokgalong recalls the experience(s). My first Wanlov the Kubolor experience was not quite an out of body experience, possibly not a once in a lifetime one either but a firmly unique experience it definitely was. From the back of the room all I could see was the back of people’s heads, and I numbed my irritation by convincing myself that I did not hear music with …
Your Own Hand Sold You
Nakhane takes em to Church
Taking his first pilgrimage to the Grahamstown carnival, our PASS Chi-laaitie Joshua Adams reports on South Africa’s much hyped prince of pop. The cold, dimly lit venue had a pious calm to it. Blue and orange back-lights illuminate the set of drums, a keyboard, a couple guitars, and laptop, as the performer Nakhane Touré prepared to rock the crowd. It made sense that everyone was sitting, listening attentively as if this show was mass and the stage was the altar. Touré is playing at St. Aidan’s …
Somewhere between a Scream and a Lullaby
In a city where the boundaries between life and death are laid bare, artists are birthing new spaces for dreaming ‘other ways of breathing’. Stacy Hardy reports from Kinshasa. Art is the strength to make reality say what it would not have been able to say by itself or, at least, what it might too easily have left unsaid,” wrote the Congolese novelist and playwright Sony Labou Tansi in 1985. Writing out of the turmoil of post independence, Sony’s texts posed a …
The Anti-Art of Kongofuturism
In the multidisciplinary lifework of Bebson Elemba aka Bebson de la Rue, Eléonore Hellio* discovers the mind and matter that inspire ‘ephemeral architectures’, radical folklore and emancipation from the post-colonial present. Bebson de la Rue is one of central Africa’s most unique sound and visual artists. A musician and a singer, a rapper, performer and bricoleur extraordinaire, he grew up in the city of Mbandaka, on the banks of the Congo River. Located astride the Equator in a region of …
Category: Articles, Pass Blog
Tags: Bebson de La Rue, Bebson Elemba, Eléonore Hellio, Pan-African Space Station, PASS
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Call For An Archive Of Afrosonics
The collective improvisations of black America – and their profound impact on poetry and sound – are near impossible to find in the annals of US academe. In fact, their absence is as stark as the control of archiving is white, writes Harmony Holiday. Since the 1950s, jazz music and the literary imagination have been inextricably linked, producing transcendent recordings and written work and many hybrids of the two – a new sonics, an antique Futurism – from Langston Hughes …