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Soul food: Out of necessity Gabi Motuba sings, she swings black life and her conduction is continuously marshalling an imminent feeling of self-sovereignty. Photo: Standard Bank
ABBEY LINCOLN

Gabi Motuba and the sound of sacred resistance

Gabi Motuba’s music stretches beyond jazz, transforming grief, memory and resistance into a spiritual sonic language rooted in black life and liberation

  • Thabang Monoa
7 min read
Elusive: The documentary Chasing Trane fails to catch the full John Coltrane.
ARCHIE SHEPP

Hearing Coltrane: Like watching a grown man learn how to speak

Watching several of Coltrane’s harmonic and melodic experiments at the cusp of the 1960s, Amiri Baraka emerges frightened, yet energised

  • Amiri Baraka
4 min read
(Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters)
BLACK MUSIC

The Lists: William Modisane’s ‘Blame Me on History’, Black Unity and Howlin’ Wolf

The Lists this week were compiled by Friday senior arts writer Kwanele Sosibo and contributor Lindokuhle Nkosi.

  • Arts Desk
2 min read
AMIRI BARAKA

The Lists this week: Airspace, THEESatisfaction and Amiri Baraka’s Black Music

The Lists this week were compiled by Friday editor Milisuthando Bongela and senior arts writer Kwanele Sosibo.

  • Arts Desk
1 min read
Ibeyi and their self-titled album are on our lists this week.
BLACK MUSIC

The Lists: ‘Be glad that you are free’, Urban Village and Ibeyi

This week’s list was compiled by Milisuthando Bongela, Kwanele Sosibo and Lloyd Gedye.

  • Arts Desk
2 min read
An installation representing the pillars of black music does not tell the whole story.
BAND

A jumbled trajectory

The International Exhibition of Black Music at Museum Africa in Newtown, Johannesburg, is a real treat.

  • Lloyd Gedye
4 min read