Cape Town - This Heritage Month, South African jazz pianist and scholar Nduduzo Makhathini is preparing to perform a series of “celebratory and thanksgiving” concerts as part of cultural work to reveal hidden stories and histories of the African continent.
Makhathini will be performing at the Fismer Hall Konservatorium at Stellenbosch University (SU) for the A Thanksgiving Ritual: Umgidi, this Friday, with the concert in partial fulfilment of his integrated PhD in music.
Nduduzo Makhathini – In the Spirit of Ntu references Makhathini’s new album, of the same name, released this year and will be presented at two venues, the Blue Room on September 17, Cape Town CBD, and Olympia Café, Kalk Bay, on September 18.
“The spirit of Ntu is really based on the concept, an ancient philosophy in Africa called Ntu that gave birth to the Bantu people, that gave birth to the ubuntu philosophy, and so I have been thinking about that as a location for enunciating sounds.
“It happened during a difficult time of riots again in South Africa and this tiredness that people were expressing about the cracks that were exposed particularly by the pandemic and how it showed people that the systems are still pretty much colonial and they are not entirely there for the black population in South Africa,” Makhathini said.
“So my research focus is about how do we start to theorise from the very notion and cultures and philosophies in Africa that are pre-colonial, that have actually survived these brutalities of coloniality.
“So on the one hand, I talk about how music becomes the site for holding these knowledge systems and ensuring they survive. And on the other hand, I start to speak about what does it mean to theorise from this paradigm and not actually borrow from any of the colonial frames that have been imposed in academia.”
For all the concerts, Nduduzo will be on piano and the spoken word. He will be touring Korea, Brazil and Europe thereafter.
Bookings can be done via Quicket: “A Thanksgiving Ritual: Umgidi –Nduduzo Makhathini.”