All jazz records are connected, just like the lives and stories they contain. All albums are plugged into one another through an infinite web of band memberships, themes and composition revisitations.
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The Train and the Making of our Music
The railroad-borne movement of the people is a grand theme in the work of Zim Ngqawana, too. The late jazz composer’s most ambitious opus, a three-part suite titled Amagoduka (Migrant Workers), is concerned with the transformative power of the rails on the personhood of migrant workers.
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Oscar Pistorius, Metaphor, and the Fear of Machines
Oscar Pistorius has come to represent both a return to all things primal in human relations and the next stage of man – a stage defined in part by the fear and excitement of machines and cyborgs.
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Jazz in the Key of Cow: Yakhal’inkomo and Jol’inkomo
The history of jazz, like the movement of cows as wealth, is often dodgily told as the story of gifted men making monumental moves.
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On the Art of the Obituary
The obituary is a form of portrait, the reading of which is a performance art denied its customary audience by Covid-19 funeral restrictions. Those with means have found a way to connect with physically distanced mourners over social media platforms.
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