I’m overwhelmed by the wealth and breadth of poetry coming out of Sub-Saharan Africa. There’s much to explore, but in today’s post I thought I’d mention the Poetry Africa festival.
Poetry Africa is an international festival that takes place annually in Durban, South Africa. It’s now in its 14th year. Two months ago (October 4-9), 20 poets from 12 countries – including South Africa, Jamaica, Palestine, Australia, India, Uruguay, Italy and Senegal – performed their poetry. Associated events were held in Cape Town, Harare (Zimbabwe) and Blantyre (Malawi).
Here are three of the South African poets who participated:
Gcina Mhlope / Photo courtesy Poetry Africa
Gcina Mhlophe: a poet, storyteller, playwright, director, author, singer, actress and activist whose work addresses themes such as apartheid and patriarchy. She also created the group Zanendaba Storytellers as a means of revitalising storytelling traditions.
Pitika Ntuli / Photo courtesy Poetry Africa
Pitika Ntuli: a poet, artist, sculptor and professor who uses myth and history in his poetry. He’s also played advisory roles on arts and culture, indigenous knowledge and traditional leadership. He’s even written his bio as a poem.
Lebogang Mashile: a poet, performer, actress, writer, columnist, TV presenter and producer. She sees poetry as a means of changing attitudes in post-apartheid South Africa; her website quotes her as saying, "The enemy isn’t really clear in the way it was before. It’s an incredibly sensitive, complicated struggle with many dimensions, but the site for that struggle is inside. ...The language of poetry comes from a place where that transformation has to begin, that sort of intuitive, creative, spiritual searching place that will be the fuel for any kind of transformation process." Mashile co-founded the Feel a Sistah! Spoken Word Collective, acted in the film Hotel Rwanda, and collaborated with choreographer Sylvia Glasser to create the contemporary dance performance Threads. She deals with issues that include women and violence, identity, and South African society and politics.
Here's a performance by Lebo Mashile earlier this year:
Emmanuel Jal at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival / Photo by David Shankbone
Emmanuel Jal is a Sudanese musician. He tours internationally and has released several albums. He’s also an active campaigner against poverty, war, human trafficking and the use of child soldiers.
But for the first part of his life, Emmanuel Jal was a child soldier himself.
When Jal was about 7 years old, he was taken from his home in southern Sudan and trained as a soldier for the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). His father had joined the SPLA and his mother had been killed. He and several hundred other children eventually escaped the fighting, travelling for almost 3 months, most of the group dying on the way. Jal survived and was taken in by a British aid worker, Emma McCune, who was married to an SPLA commander. She took Jal to Kenya for schooling. She was killed shortly after in a car crash, but friends continued to support Jal.
While living in Nairobi, Jal began singing. He found in music a way to express the horrors he’d lived, and was particularly drawn to rap music. He released his first album, Gua, which means "good" in the southern Sudanese language of Nuer and "power" in Sudanese Arabic, its name symbolically linking opposing sides in the Sudanese conflict.
Jal’s songs focus on his experience as a "war child" and on his wish for peace and reconciliation. His story is one of seeming contradictions. He’s a Christian rap artist who was once taught to hate Muslims but who collaborated on his second album, Ceasefire, with the Sudanese Muslim musician Abdel Gadir Salim to promote reconciliation. He’s an emerging international star who sings frankly about how he could have ended up: "You would’ve seen my face on the telly / fat hungry belly / flies in my eyes / head too big for my size / Just another little starving child…." But he’s clear in his purpose: "I believe I survived for a reason / to tell my story / to touch lives."
Jal says that "What energised me and kept me going was the music I do." He says that music is like therapy, and that it "is where I can be a child again."
Jal founded Gua Africa, an organisation that promotes education in Sudan, Kenya and elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa. A documentary has been made about his life and his return to Sudan to reunite with his remaining family. More recently, on his website, he is encouraging people to call for peace in the upcoming southern Sudan referendum. Emmanuel Jal continues to demonstrate "the power of music".
I first heard Vusi Mahlasela’s music after returning home from a trip to Johannesburg. I’d picked up one of his CDs at the airport before my flight out, not knowing exactly what to expect. I figured I’d chosen well when during my stopover in Nairobi, one of my trusted Kenyan colleagues expressed his approval for my choice. But it was when I got the CD home that I realised how lucky I was. Mahlasela’s voice and guitar blew me away.
Mahlasela grew up during apartheid in South Africa. He became active as a boy and then a young man in the anti-apartheid movement. He also began singing and playing guitar as a boy and his songs and poetry took on political and social themes.
Mahlasela’s website describes him as a "singer-songwriter and poet-activist." His songs are moving, joyful and full of hope. Mahlasela speaks out about racism and intolerance, and works for change. He created the Vusi Mahlasela Music Development Foundation to promote African music. He is also an official ambassador to Nelson Mandela’s HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention campaign called 46664 (Mandela’s prison number during his 27 years on Robben Island).
Vusi Mahlasela continues to tour internationally, and is releasing a new album called Say Africa in early 2011.
