To Breathe into Another Voice: A South African Anthology of Jazz Poetry

MoAfrika 'aMokgathi · Ayanda Billie · Gary Cummiskey · Raphael d'Abdon · Sedica Davids · Phillippa de Villiers · Diana Ferrus · John Forbis · Vangi Gantsho · Barry Gilder · Sarah Godsell · Aryan Kaganof · Zaheer Karolia · Keorapetse Kgositsile · Allan Kolski Horwitz · LeratoRato Kuzwayo · Percy Mabandu · Xitha Makgeta · Serame Makhele · Lebohang Masango · Lati Matjeni · Mthunzikazi Mbungwana · Frank Meintjies · Steve Mokwena · Natalia Molebatsi · Azval Moola · Nolene Morris · Bernedette Muthien · Mandy Ndaliso · Linda Ndlovo · Malika Ndlovu · Derrick Newson · Siza Nkosi · Harry Owen · Selome Payne · Koleka Putuma · Richard Roodt · Lamelle Shaw · Eugene Skeef · Cornelia Smith Fick · Xabiso Vili · Mphutlane wa Bofelo · Roux Wessels · Makhosazana Xaba

Jul 2017 · Real African Publishers Pty Ltd.

About this ebook

‘Writing about jazz is like dancing about architecture,’ observed TheloniousMonk. It’s possibly one of the few times he was wrong. Jazz poetry is almostas old as jazz itself. Poets such as Thulani Davis, Langston Hughes and ourown Keorapetse Kgositsile and Mongane Wally Serote have long heard thepatterns of the music and its makers and transformed and re-enacted thosepatterns in compelling words. Given South Africa’s venerable jazz tradition,it’s perhaps surprising it’s taken so long for more fundis to be tapped fortheir responses to our kind of jazz. But it takes a special brew of ingredientsfor this kind of book to come together. You need an inspired guiding spirit,such as editor and jazzwoman-in-words Myesha Jenkins, and you need avat in which the ingredients can mix and bubble. That’s been provided byall those who’ve opened stages for the music to happen, and most recentlyby the Orbit under the direction of Aymeric Peguillan where Jazz & PoetryNights brought words and music together, each a kind of yeast that helpedthe other to ferment and rise. You’ll find everything here in To breatheinto another voice: faithful and fantastical accounts of the jazz life and jazzpeople as well as reflections on the music as a metaphor for how we live –or, maybe more importantly, how we’d like to live. All you need to do nowis open the covers, start reading, and dance joyously about the architecture.— GWEN ANSEL

About the author

MoAfrika ’a Mokgathi is a poet, stage actress, playwrite, saxophonist/flautist (sometimes), award-winning radio presenter/producer, facilitator,businesswoman, event organiser ... and she has many more skills in hertalent hat. MoAfrika is known for her Sepedi pen and her reciting style using code switching and code mixing of the English and Sepedi languages fused with jazzy/soul/Kiba vocals and rhythm. Some of her works have been published on online platforms. Recordings include ‘Ndozakuswa’ 2014, Nduduzo Makhathini’s album, Sketches of Tomorrow, and Tribe Soil’s EP (2011). Ayanda Billie is a social critic, freelance writer and poet who published apoetry anthology in 2006, Avenues of my Soul. He says, ‘In my poetry, I’mtrying to bring life to the heartbeat of my culture, the joys of myself anddeep-seated grief, and to find the brightness of hope on the faces of thechildren running on our streets and the strides made by their mothers. Alsoto be the voice to the confused factory workers in the chaos of the newdispensation.’ Billie was born and bred in Uitenhage in the township of KwaNobuhle where he still lives. Currently, he is working at Volkswagen SA as an operator. He has recently completed the Masters in Creative Writing at Rhodes University. Gary Cummiskey lives in Johannesburg. He is the former editor of DyeHard Press, which he started in 1994. He is the author of several poetrychapbooks, the most recent being Don’t Stop Until Incinerated (TearoomBooks, Stockholm, 2016), I Remain Indoors (Tearoom Books, 2013) and SkyDreaming (Graffiti Kolkata, India, 2011). In 2009, he published Who was Sinclair Beiles?, a collection of writings about the South African Beat poet co-edited with Eva Kowalska. An expanded edition appeared in 2014. His collection of short fiction, Off-ramp, was a finalist for the Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award in 2014. Dr Raphael d’Abdon was born in Italy and moved to South Africa in 2008.In 2013, he edited the collection Marikana. A Moment in Time, published hisdebut poetry collection Sunnyside Nightwalk, and was featured at Durban’sPoetry Africa. His second collection, Salt Water, was launched in 2016. Heteaches South African Spoken Word poetry at Unisa. Sedica Davids believes the world is indeed round with wide-open spaces forthe imagination. She believes that the life energy contained in each body ispowerful beyond imagination. Justice drives her. Truth infuses her, andharmony is usually a breath away. Sedica believes that courageous action isbuoyed by engaging with the spaces in between, the notes one feels when thesilence appears. To her, poetry is frugality steeped in pungence – to smell,experience, and picture the poem. She is inspired by the courage and conviction of such revolutionary women as Poolan Devi and Rosa Luxembourg, and many more. Writer-performer Phillippa Yaa de Villiers is the author of two collectionsof poetry and co-editor of No Serenity Here: An Anthology of African Poetry,which was translated into Mandarin. In 2014, she was the CommonwealthPoet. Original Skin, her autobiographical play, toured South Africa andGermany between 2008–2012. Since 2007, she has read at poetry festivals inGermany, Denmark, UK, Cuba, Sweden, Zimbabwe, and Ghana. She won the2010 SALA award for poetry and the 2009 Writing Beyond the Fringe Awardfor her short story, The Day That Jesus Dropped the Ball. She lecturesCreative Writing at Wits University. Diana Ferrus is a writer, poet, storyteller, and performer. She writes in bothEnglish and Afrikaans and has published two anthologies, one in Afrikaans(Ons Komvandaan); one in English (I’ve come to take you home). Diana iswell-known for the role that her poem ‘I’ve come to take you home’ playedin securing the return of the remains of Sarah Baartman, a Khoisan womanwho was paraded in Europe and whose remains were displayed in the Museede L’Homme in Paris. She also pres