Afro-Sonic Mapping

On Saturday (04-08-2018) Ras Kilanji invited me to the Radio Escola 88.5FM live broadcast from the Sabores 1001 bar. It was a great, further introduction to the various vogues in Angolan music. Semba on Saturday – a focus on Semba music.

Listening to the phonograph recordings from the Congo region circa 1906, one is all at once transfixed, transported, and mad mad overwhelmed. Herein lies the fathomless foundation of Hip Hop, Jazz, Mambo, Dub, Blues, Black Punk, Samba, and R&B. But let me warn you that without previous knowledge and the application of a whole lot of imagination you might be somewhat disappointed with the lack of warmth in the actual reproduction. Yes, dear Blogites, even after the digital equalising and enhancing process, mid and low frequencies simply do not exist; there’re a lot of highs on those wax cylinders. Sadly you cannot enhance what was not captured in the original recording due to technological limitations; but I know, from personally playing antique instruments used by musicians in that era, the vast range of frequencies they are capable of producing is awesome.

All this to stand witness to the fact that technology has advanced in leaps and bounds: after all, it was 1877 when Thomas Edison invented the Phonograph recording machine, and in that epoch sub-bass was an alien phenomenon to western ears. Edison was not Dre; the Phonograph was not Pro Tools. But, irrelevant of all the above, let me emphasise that I’m so very very grateful to have been granted entry into those two sonic havens – the Berlin Phonogramm Archiv and the British Library – where the earliest recordings of African music exist. I’ve made a selection and I’m taking them back to present to the cultures from which they were taken. There they will be decoded, translated and, with a select group of traditional and contemporary musicians, I will be going into the recording studio equipped with Sanzas, synthesisers, beat boxes and drums to create some new sonic cartographic collages. First stop Luanda, Angola on this my Afro-Sonic Mapping maiden voyage.

To This, Past, Present, Future

Like a hula hoop revolving
Ngola’s never, going, going gone.
Sextant guided colonial endeavours
captain’s log omits the lives left bloated,
floating in the dark dirge of sorrow songs
Ship sails bellow in time, to mind retention,
whisper colonial expansionistic empirical exploits
She, he, they walked the plank to fifes and fiddles
torn asunder from the grooves of talking drums
Squeezed stretched thru narrow pipes of plunder
no exoneration for the perpetrator and his axe
Growth congregates in swelled up margins
Un-learn to learn liberation’s freedom songs
Lassoed into snares that shift shape syntax.
From coast to coast the ghosts of vessels
chanted down the warped time rights from wrongs
Indigo, purple, ochre, beige blue people
Extended shades abound in the plethora of all their throngs.

Nod your head to this.
Tap your feet to this.
Pantomime to this.
Do the splits to this.
Click your fingers to this.
Wind your hips to this.
Pirouette to this.
You can Twerk to this.
Swing your arms to this.
Commit a crime to this.
Go deaf, dumb, blind to this

Last count ninety million lamentations
No exaggeration mark underscored.
Blood stained tracks of ecclesiastics proselytizing
Saved souls wiped out on countless killing floors
Crescendos fade to twilight flicker
Mounting decibels explode in muted sobs
Attempts to deafen pain and trauma,
only accelerates excruciating throb.
Halfhearted post-colonial investigation
illegible names stain river banks
Cold war revolution
Manifesto
painted bold on army tanks
Mutiny regime change intervention
Thickened scabs on ever-open oozing sores
Past-time tension flows with warning
Oil the unhinged rusty door
There’re more sunsets in the dawning
of the future’s present pastime score

She, I, he, you, we’re oracle abstracted,
multi-coloured beads lined up in rows.
Luba memory board predictions
murmured in cartographic astro – sonic prose
Iconoclastic melt down motion
meld into clouds on perfumed breeze
insider souls flee incarceration
escape the curse of Capucines

Entrails leak freedom paths aflame
Tight rope burns deeper into flesh that’s stricken
Existing in a future promised without pain
See how the Gris-Gris dance out mambo
Oblivious of safety nets
I smell the rage of love filled silence
The have not’s find what’s not been lost
Structures built on misdeeds waiver
From the wind of no reprieve
In the land of No, I’ve not forgotten
Signs are shaping new beliefs
In a place since time un-trodden
The squawk of silence comes from crows
Like sacrificial lambs evolving
Embrace the light let future glow

Nod your head to this.
Tap your feet to this.
Pantomime to this.
Do the splits to this.
Click your fingers to this.
Wind your hips to this.
Pirouette to this.
You can Twerk to this.
Swing your arms to this.
Commit a crime to this.
Go deaf, dumb, blind to this.

Out reach catapults us forward
Shadow boxers out shuffle grime
Over-brimmed with light euphoria
Write lexicons repel old lies
We step the step of present questions
Climb ladders, suspended from the skies
When you hear inertia call you to the abyss
Will you ignore her or comply
There, on the coast of my imagination
I glimpsed a present doused in fair
danced unfathomable depths in rhythms rhyme zone
to welcome in utopian resolve
We, you, I, visionaries no limbo
On the paths of love sublime