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| 'Africa rising' takes centre stage at scholarships |
After being specially commissioned by SAMRO, the multi-award-winning jazz pianist has composed new music to accompany Mbeki’s rousing call for a common African identity, which he delivered to Parliament on the passing of South Africa’s new Constitution in 1996.
The live band performing at UNISA’s ZK Matthews Hall in Pretoria on 26 August 2017 will consist of Bokani Dyer (piano), Romy Brauteseth (bass), Marlon Witbooi (drums), Spha Mdlalose (vocals), Joe Makhanza (kora) and Mandla Mlangeni (trumpet). The event will be live-streamed on the SAMRO Foundation’s Facebook page.
Dyer, who has won both the SAMRO Overseas Scholarships Competition and a Standard Bank Young Artist Award, explains his interpretation of this iconic text: “I have chosen to set the accompaniment into four movements, which I have named Landscape, Heritage, Conflict and Hope, corresponding to the themes of the speech.
“It is a challenge to condense and distil a speech of such gravity, where every word is significant. I have attempted to do this and still adequately portray the message being expressed,” says Dyer.
The speech was also set to music by 1964 SAMRO scholarship winner Peter Klatzow for the 50th anniversary edition of SAMRO’s Overseas Scholarships Competition in 2011. Klatzow composed a new work for voice and orchestra for the two Western Art Music finalists to sing.
Speaking at the 2011 event, Mbeki noted that he believed his 1996 speech’s impact derived in part from its “celebration of African achievement and therefore its affirmation of Africa and Africans” and “its repudiation of race, ethnicity, colour and historical origin in defining who is an African”.
Says André le Roux, Managing Director of the SAMRO Foundation: “We thought it timely to revisit this work as the need to forge a collective South African and African identity has become all the more urgent in our current social and political context.
“Former president Mbeki spoke about the need for nation-building, and we believe that through the power of music, we have a duty to play a vital role in helping to create this essence of authentic Africanness.”
He added that the creation and promotion of indigenous African music – known, incidentally, by the acronym IAM – would form a larger part of the SAMRO Foundation’s strategic vision in the future, with two archive heritage projects in the pipeline specifically focused on indigenous African music.
Dyer’s new work will form part of the live entertainment on Saturday and will not be played by the finalists, but he did create another new work, Neo Native, that was performed during Thursday’s semi-final round. Fellow jazzman André Petersen’s new composition For Chan (dedicated to his wife, Chantal Willie-Petersen), will be played by the two jazz finalists at UNISA on Saturday.
Composer Hans Roosenschoon also contributed a new work, Play it Now, which the Western Art Music pianists played during the semi-final round, while Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph has created Catch Me if You Can for the two finalists to tackle on Saturday.
Tickets can be bought on www.webtickets.co.za and live streaming on the night can be found on the SAMRO Foundation’s Facebook page. For more information, visit www.samrofoundation.org.za
Artslink.co.za Account:
Anriette Chorn
anriette.chorn@samro.org.za
011 712 8444
083 278 0147
SAMRO Foundation
www.samrofoundation.org.za
Web site: http://www.samrofoundation.org.za
Related Venue:
ZK Matthews Hall, Unisa, Pretoria Gauteng South Africa
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