Resounding resistance: Decolonising memory through Johannesburg’s sound art narratives

Abstract

This article is drawn from findings of the research project ‘Decolonising Education for Peace in Africa’. It analyses a collaborative sound art project in Johannesburg, investigating how sound art can act as conduit for the transmission of community memories, particularly as part of broader decolonial efforts. We propose that sound artists are able to activate seemingly forgotten community narratives, translating these into artistic expressions that offer a pathway towards visions of decolonisation through sonic means. This art form, we argue, serves as a potent form of activism against the deliberate historical amnesias imposed by colonialism, which have sought to efface and overwrite community memories. By harnessing sonic remembrance, communities confront these colonial narratives, resisting the appropriation of their auditory culture and the imposition of Western musical norms. The article discusses how community sound artists engage with their sonic creations to assert their identity and agency, deploying African musical instruments and elements within the post-colonial urban fabric as a means of reclaiming their narrative autonomy in community reconstitution. Through this lens, the study highlights the critical role of soundscapes in challenging colonial legacies and reasserting indigenous agency in the ongoing process of community self-definition yet shaped by its very own intersectional inequalities.

Introduction

The impetus for decolonial practice has gained global momentum in recent years, particularly in South Africa. Indeed, in South Africa, historical forces of colonial imposition and occupation continue to pose existential threats to communities, undermining their quest for survival and the cultivation of meaningful coexistence. Colonial rule in South Africa, which goes back many centuries, has in fact often resulted in the dissolution of indigenous social fabrics, with communities grieving the loss of cultural continuities they see as having been supplanted by foreign ideologies. Nonetheless, there exists a resilient countermovement within these communities, a concerted effort to resist the erasure of their collective identities and to combat the amnesia facilitated by both colonial and other forms of systemic violence. Attempts to decolonise have been particularly articulated in the realm of South African higher education (cf. Zembylas, 2018).

Decolonisation refers to the reversal of colonialism, understanding colonialism as the theft of land and liberty of the indigenous population (Mignolo and Nanibush, 2018). Mignolo specifically emphasises the need to ‘dewesternize’ and challenge external colonialism (Mignolo, 2011). Indeed, while much of the current scholarship on decolonisation has emerged from a Latin American context, such debates have always taken place through an internationalised and mutually inspired dialogue between different colonised regions of the world (cf. Ferretti, 2020). In the African context, scholars such as Achille Mbembe, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni or Mahmood Mamdani have had a strong influence in shaping this debate. In essence, much of the otherwise heterogenous discourse around African forms of decolonisation has focused on pan-African agency (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013: 269), problematising the forms of violence that have resulted from the colonial imposition of the divisive nation-state (Mamdani, 2020). Specifically in response to the #RhodesMustFall protests across South Africa since 2015, there has been a call for the return to African forms of knowledge within school and university curricula (Adefila et al., 2022: 269). This is based on the insight that education needs to acknowledge and allow for the multiplicity and contestedness of knowledges (Mbembe, 2019: 242). In this article, we specifically concentrate on the potential of sound art to impact cultural knowedges, resisting and subverting colonial amnesia and articulating, through the medium of sonic fiction (Ikoniadou, 2017), decolonial identities (as crafted from memory) that resonate with the wider quest for decolonisation.

In political terms, our analysis specifically explores the relationship between Johannesburg’s soundscapes and the formation of social and political communities through artistic means, in their attempt to counter persistent colonial structures of inequality. It examines how sound artists capture the city’s auditory environment to communicate seemingly forgotten cultural narratives through sound. We frame this process of forgetting through colonial forms of dominance and inequality ‘colonial amnesia’. We show how, in our project, sound artists leverage soundscapes to create artistic expressions that address these amnesias and create new forms of remembrance inspired by sonic means. Based on a case study from the ‘Decolonising Peace Education in Africa’ (DEPA) project of which we were part, this article therefore investigates the deployment of sonic memories as a mechanism to counter forms of colonial forgetting, silencing and amnesia. We interrogate how artists discern, augment and aestheticise the array of auditory stimuli present in their communities, thus providing nuanced perspectives on the emotional resonances, cultural practices and the quotidian realities that are prevalent within these societies. With their sonic interventions, they make political statements about the past, present and future of their communities, evoking grievances and fears on the one hand, and hopes and visions on the other hand. Our specific focus is a community situated in the inner-city suburbs of Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest urban agglomeration, with an emphasis on understanding the complex interplay between the distinctive soundscape, the process of community formation and the local artists’ interpretations of this dynamic.

Intersections of sound art and politics: South African perspectives

The 17th century marked the beginnings of longer-term colonisation of South Africa by a white European population. To cultivate the land the settlers stole from the indigenous population, they enslaved much of the Black population who had also migrated to South Africa from other parts of Africa. They eventually brought slaves to the Cape from further afield, mostly hailing from the Indian Ocean Basin. In 1883, the Boers, led by Paul Kruger, began migrating inland into South Africa. Subsequently, the discovery of gold in the Gauteng province (as it later became known, with Johannesburg as one of the biggest cities) precipitated the South African War between the British and the Boers over control of this resource. The aftermath of the war, however, saw the emergence of a still-white-dominated government, formalised through the onset of the apartheid era.

Apartheid, defined as a system of institutionalised racial segregation and discrimination, continued to perpetuate profound injustices, infamous for its racist practices that privileged South Africa’s white population economically, politically and culturally. Apartheid, starting in 1948, was officially abolished in 1994, paving the way for Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress (ANC), a majority representative party, to become president of South Africa. While the formal abolition of apartheid promised an end to fear and persecution for the Black population, white citizens retained advantages in accessing resources, land ownership, socio-economic status, academic opportunities and employment prospects. This has to some extent resulted in persisting racial tensions between the Black and white population of South Africa, interspersed with more complex intersectional inequalities along the lines of gender and class.

More recently, the progress most famously illustrated through the image of the South African Rainbow Nation (a term coined by Desmond Tutu to refer to his vision of the country’s diverse cultures and ethnicities living peacefully side-by-side) has advertised the country as a destination for migrants fleeing persecution in other African nations and countries. However, this influx has been perceived as a threat to job security and resource access by some of the South African population, leading to different expressions of segregation and xenophobic violence within Black communities. In 2008 and 2015, larger-scale xenophobic attacks erupted in different South African cities (including Johannesburg) and ended up killing both South Africans and non-South Africans (Tella, 2016: 143). This phenomenon reflects a complex interplay of race, socio-economic dynamics and historical legacies in post-apartheid South Africa, mirroring at least partially the ways in which colonial logics of subordination and stratification coupled with unequally distributed resources have escalated and created different hierarchies of victimhood (cf. Tella, 2016).

These intersectional processes take place in an ecosystem that deals with the persistent legacies of colonialism but which are increasingly embracing decolonial approaches. Artists and sound artists, too, contribute to processes of decolonisation in meaningful ways. For example, initiatives like the ‘Sounds of South African History’ project launched in 2020 at the University of Pretoria (n.d.), the ‘Oral/Aural: Pastness and Sound as Medium and Method’ programme at the University of the Western Cape, and even our ‘Decolonial Education for Peace in Africa (DEPA)’ project illustrate the search through sonic means for a more inclusive and decolonial approach to academia in South Africa beyond. The sonic element of the DEPA project, initiated in 2022, focuses on documenting and analysing the sonic landscapes of South Africa to reveal otherwise visual-heavy aspects of the country’s cultural heritage and challenge colonial narratives.

The context to this is that, in South Africa and beyond, there is now an increasing interest in the intersection between art and the politics of peace (Mitchell et al., 2020; Vogel et al, 2024). Scholars are investigating how art can carry forms of peace and cohesion as well as how it can carry nationalistic, violent or conflictive attitudes – sometimes even both at the same time (Kappler and McKane, 2019: 8). Particularly in relation to urban life, art has received considerable interest in its capacity to provide forms of inclusion and regeneration (Sharp et al., 2005) as well as its ability to address otherwise deeply engrained urban divisions (Cole and Kappler, 2022). For this article, rather than focusing on the politics of peace, we are interested in the ways in which communities are artistically made and remade, and the extent to which sound art can trigger a transition from colonial continuities to generating decolonial community ideas of resistance. In this, artists act as interpreters of soundscapes, capturing and either preserving or transforming the soundscapes of their communities. This work requires a deep understanding of the community dynamics at work and is influenced by the power relations within those communities (Kelman, 2010; Licht, 2019). Such work has been attempted by collective community work (a form of which we analyse in this article) but also by established individual artists. For example, in Johannesburg, artist James Webb has advanced sound art by transforming city sounds into immersive installations that prompt introspection and dialogue (cf. Webb, 2017). One of these projects is entitled ‘Prayer (Johannesburg)’ and consists of a polyphony of voices chanting prayers of the various different religious traditions that can be found in the city, illustrating the diversity of religions present in it. Similarly, musician Cara Stacey’s compositions integrate unique sounds and instruments from Southern Africa in her work, highlighting the cultural identity of her community through sonic means.

Soundscapes and activism

Sound art includes a variety of techniques, ranging from music to work with soundscapes, which this article focuses on. Soundscape work is the translation of auditory environments into artistically mediated processes and outcomes through mediation, distortion and other forms of processing (cf. Schafer, 1993). According to Truax (2008), soundscapes can be divided into three main elements: keynote sounds, which represent the background auditory features of a given environment; sound signals, which are the sounds perceived in the foreground, and sound marks, which carry important symbolic meanings in a given community (p. 106). Pijanowski et al. (2011) emphasise that alterations in sound patterns can serve as indicators of corresponding changes in both the natural surroundings and the local community (p. 206). Analysing a community’s sonic environment can therefore serve as a way of understanding its wider social, political and cultural relations. Changes in the soundscapes of specific communities can also signal shifts in political power relations and artwork based on soundscapes can grasp such shifts effectively.

Here, community activism refers to the collaborative efforts undertaken by individuals within a community with the aim of bringing about transformative outcomes (Van Stekelenburg and Klandermans, 2013: 2). The emergence of activism as a powerful catalyst for societal transformation can be attributed to a variety of dissatisfactions or aspirations within a given community and has been articulated in colonial and post-colonial contexts (cf. Larmer, 2015). Sound indeed plays a significant role in activism, encompassing the utilisation of songs within civil rights movements as well as the integration of sounds and music in the public domain (Forman, 2002). According to Waitt et al. (2014), sound can help us understand how bodies move, organise and mobilise in their political context. Power and resistance alike can be expressed sonically, and an artistic intervention into the sonic arena of communities can be considered a political act.

What is more, sonic properties serve as memories, linking subconscious sounds of community infrastructures (Chandola, 2013) and deliberate sonic creations. These often merge, with music absorbing and reflecting the sonic infrastructures of everyday community life. This process during the course of which memories are sonically created links those memories to possible futures, envisioning utopias based on what might seem lost and helping articulate unspoken aspects of community life (Harris, 2015). For instance, based on the aural legacies of the Shoah, which have often been marginalised through a primary focus on the visual, Morris (2001) suggests that the interplay between sound and visual memory reveals additional layers of memory production. Despite the dominance of visuals, sound remains crucial for accessing past memories in the light of how they are felt in the present and thus give us an insight into the ways in which memories are sonically evoked (cf. Damousi and Hamilton, 2017; Street, 2016).

In this vein, we propose that community development is shaped by the memories its members imagine and negotiate daily, which are not necessarily universally shared but vary over time and context. For example, Morris (2001) discusses the role of iconic sounds in Holocaust remembrance, illustrating how sonic memories can capture complex social dynamics, particularly in cultures dominated by oral histories (cf. Harris, 2015; cf. Witz et al., 2017). Soundscape work offers snapshots of community life, reflecting the artist’s perspective and ethical considerations. They navigate the potential to romanticise or obscure aspects of the past, especially in settings affected by colonial violence where sounds can transport and transform memories within a given political ecosystem (cf. McCartney, 2016). For instance, the song ‘Shosholoza’, once a rallying cry among Black South African labourers, has evolved into a unifying anthem for all South Africans, now prominently featured in sports events to promote national unity.

In a community context, soundscapes reflect not only the tangible aspects of the surrounding environment, but also the emotional and social conditions of the community, encompassing both harmonious and discordant states. Sound transports alterations in social configurations. When artistically processed, moulded and transformed, soundscapes can make powerful statements about the social fabric of communities and cast light on the exclusionary and inclusionary infrastructures that shape them. Sound art, in this, serves as a tool for community activism and not only a way of representing the status quo, but it also makes an intervention into the nature of communities, raising a number of crucial questions. What does the sound artist consider important sonic features of a given community? Which sounds does the artist (re)create and what forms of social life do these represent?

Certainly, the relationship between sound and politics is not linear, as some of this scholarship may suggest. Although it has been argued that sound art may provide a way of overcoming rigid visual divisions in sites of war and conflict (Cole and Kappler, 2022), sounds are as shaped by the politics of the day as communities are. Sonic engagement carries forms of inclusion and exclusion, remembering certain ideas and notions of community while forgetting others. We will show below that the sound project at stake in our research was successful at problematising colonial power inequalities but at the same time reinforced gendered hierarchies, which tend to marginalise women’s voices in the field of sound art. Being vehicles of politics, sound projects therefore activate memories that material and visual landscapes may have edited out. They engage in political communities in ways that help overcome seemingly rigid forms of social order on the one hand, or cement social inequalities on the other hand.

Methodology: sound as a way of learning from and about communities in their own terms

Our sound project took place in Johannesburg with data collected from May to October 2022. Based on the recruitment by and networks of the community artist who acted as liaison to our project, our study involved interviews with 10 sound artists from Johannesburg who participated in a soundscapes project, predominantly using traditional African instruments. Fourteen soundscape clips were created by artists that communicated their narratives sonically. They used different mediums to create the clips, ranging from formal instruments like violins to the viola (one participant refers to the ‘African viola’, an instrument similar to a Western violin, just bigger, lower in sound and requiring more pressure to play) and even non-traditional instruments, such as striking rocks. ¹ Most participants were musicians, except for one who is a light engineer in the music industry, with two being foreign nationals and the others born in South Africa. All hailed from either semi-rural or urban backgrounds with rural village ties. The sound stories were created by 10 artist groups in inner-city suburbs in Johannesburg, South Africa. Artists were given a very open mandate to represent their communities in times of peace and conflict. All artists, including the initial interviewee who subsequently conducted the other interviews via purposive snowball sampling, identified as African males closely connected to their local community. Our primary objective was to gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which artists’ renderings of soundscapes intervene in the fabric of their community. We listened to the sound stories (music clips) they produced and analysed their perspectives through semi-structured interviews.

Interviews were conducted in-person in a location accessible to all participants. Most interviews were conducted in English. In some instances, the participants expressed their ideas and values in their native language. This was, however, translated into English by Participant 1 in the interviews. A semi-structured interview guide was provided to the interviewer (Participant #1), but, in line with the project’s decolonial ambitions, the interviewer was able to follow their own line of questioning and deviate from the semi-structured guide. All interviews were audio-recorded with participants’ informed consent and transcribed verbatim. The ethics committee of the Open University (project lead) and the University of South Africa (UNISA) approved this project.

Our method for decolonial strategies to data collection is referred to as counter/storytelling (cf. Zavala, 2016: 3–4). This methodology encourages the remembering of histories hailing from pre-colonial rule (Zavala, 2016). Sonic counter-storytelling, here, is an attempt to enable colonised peoples to narrate their political agendas themselves through collective forms of voicing. As colonial structures continue to serve to subjugate indigenous peoples as colonial subjects (and or slaves) and negate the cultural histories of these people, however, through remembering or re-telling stories through sonic memories, they are able to discursively reclaim their identities (Zavala, 2016). We analysed the interview transcripts using thematic analysis, starting with identifying key concepts and themes for initial coding and then organising the findings around these themes. To ensure credibility, we employed strategies such as member checking, peer debriefing and triangulation. We aimed to enhance the transferability of our findings by providing detailed descriptions and direct quotations from participants.

Problematically however, the participant-led sampling method that we deployed in a decolonial spirit resulted in the participant-led recruitment of a group that shared similar demographic profiles, which inadvertently brought to light certain power dynamics and social structures. Crucially, the fact that all participants ended up being male has implications, especially in a context where issues like xenophobia and gender-based violence are significant (Masiko-Mpaka, 2023; UN Women, 2024). Although not representative of the broader community, this outcome clearly sheds light on how societal issues influence sound art, reflecting broader struggles, particularly those affecting women’s visibility and public agency. This created the dilemma for us about the choice to follow through with a participant-led approach on the one hand, or the possibility of a closer intervention in the light of those gendered hierarchies on the other hand. While we did not want to artificially distort the outcome of the community-based sound project, we decided that the sound stories that reproduced and amplified a predominantly male perspective on decoloniality needed to be in conversation with some of the women’s voices that struggle to find representation in the arts sector more broadly. We therefore decided to explore the ways in which this sound project relates to the work and narratives of a selection of female African sound and music artists. We compared our findings with a 2021 MixMag feature by Shiba Melissa Mazaza on 17 female African sound and music artists, 10 of whom are from and/or based in South Africa. This comparison helped us explore the political significance of our project within a male-dominated sound environment and assess how well our male-centric findings align with the experiences and views of these female artists. This not only highlights the diversity within the community but also brings to light the unique challenges female artists face in shaping the sound art landscape.

The sounds of amnesia and sonic remembering in Johannesburg

In general terms, it has been argued that sound art challenges social disruptions caused by colonial and capitalist interventions, using sonic memories to propose togetherness and recover forgotten community interactions (Burnett et al., 2023; Hutchison, 2022). This involves probing archival silences and re-engaging marginalised voices, without simplistically dichotomising indigenous and colonial sounds, but acknowledging their complex interrelations (Burnett et al., 2023: 348). Ultimately, in our project, sound artists sonically reimagine communities as liberated from colonial influences. They use their creations to convey and reshape the sounds of social life into visions of a decolonial future inspired by what they remember as a pre-colonial past, mediated through the politics of the present. Importantly, as narrated by the sound artists we worked with, such sonic work in communities essentially acts as a defence against what is felt as under threat. Many of the sound clips in our sample indeed represent a longing to recreate what has been lost or what is being jeopardised from being eroded or forgotten. In that, the artists work against the cultural amnesia of the social fabric of community that they see as threatened and thus create forms of community that are informed by the quest of decolonial interactions. In Johannesburg, South Africa’s wealthiest city, the undoing of colonial amnesias takes place within a vibrant mix of cultures, nationalities and socio-economic backgrounds, drawn by historical gold mining opportunities. The soundscapes collected in this project encapsulate the city’s complex social dynamics, from the hustle of commerce to vibrant community celebrations, showcasing a rich tapestry of sounds influenced by the city’s varied inhabitants. Through traditional African instruments, these soundscapes not only reflect the city’s atmosphere but also the artists’ interpretations of their community.

In our analysis we discovered that many interviewees mourned a loss of African identity due to European colonisation and apartheid, a phenomenon still felt today as ‘white privilege’ – where white citizens retain more resources and a better quality of life. This historical impact prompts artists to address sonic forms of amnesia, aiming to restore suppressed Black African identities. Indeed, there remains a profound sense of lost identity among the population, underscoring the ongoing struggle against the remnants of colonial rule.

It is worth following the conversation between Participant #3 and their Interviewer (P#1) discussing the fact that the interviews were conducted in English and, therefore, a complete break with colonial manifestations is impossible:

(P#3)

Because, right now, even now we are doing this interview. Like now, I’m being conscious about it, I’ve been speaking in English, and I’m like ‘ok, me speaking in English is.’..

(P#1)

And we are all Blacks here [referring to race as Black Africans]

(P#3)

And we are all Blacks here. The only thing that I haven’t lost in my speech is that accent, but the words that are spoken are spoken in English, so it is a thing of we find ourselves so much that we have lost who we are, and the minute in which we begin to lose our identities is the minute we begin to lose who we are.

(P#1)

We define ourselves according to the Western system.

(P#3)

Yes. Because. . .

(P#1)

And it becomes normal.

(P#3)

And it becomes normal. And because, right now what’s happening is that everything that we do, is kind of like drawn from European ideologies.

This conversation shows that it is impossible to fully erase colonial identities that have been deeply ingrained into people’s social relations. The strive for decolonisation here is therefore not about returning to an assumed ‘pure’ identity before colonialism, but instead a way of remembering, reactivating and mobilising marginalised forms of social interaction in communities. This speaks to the idea that sound artists (in our case African musicians) are able to provide a platform for the community’s shared experiences and emotions and creating new imagined forms of social life inspired by sonic memories. In this context, it is worth noting Participant 5’s sceptical view of the term ‘indigenous’, when referring to instruments that originates from the African continent when he states:

(P#5)

I hate the word indigenous with passion. . .it makes you feel like you are only making things for here [South Africa].

This was in response to Participant 1’s use of the word ‘indigenous’ when referring to traditional African-made music instruments. Instead, Participant 5 highlights the problematic seclusion of indigenous sounds and calls for an interconnected understanding of sonic worlds. To honour this quest for interconnection, we will use the term ‘African instruments’ when referring to instruments specifically originating from the continent. Those instruments, as our interviews show, have taken on a key role in the participants’ efforts to resist what they perceive as a profound loss of their identities, which is expressed sonically, too.

Coloniality and loss of sound identity

Colonialism has come with the introduction of systems of governance, society and culture, but has therefore risked the erasure of existing social systems. Participant 2 argues that the African people have lost themselves in the Western system of music to fit into the expectations of the world. While, as he suggests, African music tends to be spontaneous and gradually unfold to the purpose of the event, such as weddings, funerals, ceremonies, Western music is more centrally-driven, for instance often requiring a conductor:

(P#2)

Wow- you see colonization has actually confused people in a way. But at the same time it has actually helped them to be exposed. [. . .] I think in that way colonization has actually taught us to be more open, but on the other side it has actually made us to demonize our own music. Our own instruments.

Participant 3 confirms that the damage that colonisation caused is indeed related to the loss of African forms of identity, and is still ongoing, whereas European producers continue to try to influence African music since, according to the participant, these producers want the final say as to the sound that should be produced when artists from Africa try to make commercially viable music within the recognised music industry. P#3 specifically alludes to the fact that European producers are the ones setting the rules for how music is made:

(P#3)

I feel like let me put this, even that it’s not a discussion, it’s a thing of either you do this thing, or you fokof [sic].

Participant 4, too, is worried about South African musicians ‘losing’ traditional music by not exploring it enough, specifically referring to the younger generation. In his opinion, the younger generation of African musicians are only interested in gospel music, which, he reiterates, ‘is not your [meaning our/African] culture’. He continues to argue that music has been diluted with a Western perspective, which has resulted in the loss of an African identity. He goes as far as to say that even the traditional healers, known as Sangomas, do not consult their own traditional ways of healing any longer, but instead rely on Western medicines. It becomes clear that Western colonialism, as it has seeped into African music traditions, is perceived as a diametrically opposed threat to the unique nature of the latter. Rather than seeking an argument in favour of purity, however, what the participants note seems to be an indication of an uneven power structure, where one sonic tradition (in this case the colonial) is used to supersede other sonic traditions. Instead of seeing this as a neat binary between Western and African music, we interpret this to express the sense of loss that comes with the power imbalances of the different music styles on global political stages and markets. It is in this power imbalance that feelings of loss are articulated, and concerns about the forgetting of African music traditions materialise. This also means that even when the different traditions are seen to hybridise, the power imbalances between them continue to be evident. Participant 5, for instance, mentions that it is difficult to produce traditional African music since African musicians ‘think with a colonised mind’.

(P#5)

So now I know, even if I want to make a, say a Zionist [specific African Christian religion] song, you know, this is how they layer their harmonies you know. So there’s lots of things that we really are not taking into consideration regarding our music you know. And our sound, because of we are still having a colonised mind.

Participant 10 reiterates this sentiment:

(P#10)

African music is not seen as valuable around the world. [. . .] The colonizers came here and stole the people and beats went to other places and they developed the music for that audience and did not bother to see what was being produced in Africa.

[. . .]

African music is different to Western music as it is a part of our everyday lives, it is not just for concerts and show – it is for celebration and sadness, you use it to send out a message. If you go to rural areas, music is used even more to communicate, you can know what is going on because people are singing – everyday – they sing to show what is happening – this is how music is used in Africa as everyday and not just to give a show.

This is relevant in the political context: South Africa has a past rooted in colonial rule, but is also shaped by the more recent apartheid regime and its legacies. Both systems are interconnected and intended to oppress one population, while benefitting another. The accompanying layers of racism have also translated into the sonic environment of the country. Participant 7 explains how this discriminatory sonic environment, which was designed to erase African identities and to take from the Black African population, has also translated into its commercial elements:

(P#7)

. . .before democracy, we used to have industry again. But the industry that we had in South Africa, it was made to take from Africa.

He emphasises that, rather than a phenomenon of the past, this inequality and exploitation continues to shape South Africa’s role in the production of sound:

(P#7)

I think that will never go. Remember [speaking vernacular], the system that is going to oppress

(P#1)

A Black man?

(P#7)

Or a Black community, for longer than anticipated, and if not forever. You understand. And this is a system they developed long ago. Ne [agreement]. They invented this system. They made sure it lives through history. [vernacular], because we have to take it that far. It means that even the education the we receive as musicians as artists, education was colonised long ago. . .. It is just that they made the white community and the Western community as if they are the most superior.

However, sound not only plays a role in the ways in which the apartheid system has colonised African sonic identities, but it also serves as a means of resistance. For instance, Participant 2 suggests that music allowed the oppressed to tell stories to the world that would otherwise not have been voiced, reiterating the importance of music as a means of communication in times of oppression:

(P#2)

The only way they could express their frustrations and their concerns, it was through music. Because you must remember, you were not allowed to speak. You didn’t even, you weren’t even given a platform to speak, so the only way that artists could communicate certain, like what’s going on in the country to the international world, is through music.

Participant 4 agrees and suggests that the messages that were delivered through music have aided the plight of the oppressed. He argues that music played a crucial role in bringing down the apartheid regime. He goes on to mention that this is why South African music is considered ‘heavy’. As with Participant 2, Participant 10 also reiterates that the so-called struggle songs have become engrained into the social fabric of protest:

(P#10)

In South Africa we have a long tradition of music that is part of society – understanding how this culture is part of us is very important. It shapes where we are and how we live. Music was sometimes the only way to protest in the past – we had to fight apartheid with music and struggle songs – then when we no longer had apartheid, these songs become part of our lives. This is our heritage and we can share it.

It is notable that there is a pan-African ² understanding of resistance against (sonic) colonialism and the ways in which sound mobilises forms of resistance against it. The general consensus among the artists is that a return to African instruments and African roots within music can mediate the grasp that coloniality holds over the African identity, and that through revisiting traditional African values, this can be achieved. This sentiment is shared by some of the female artists we looked at, too. Sound artist DJ Lesoul, for instance, expresses the sense of power coming from a pan-African approach to sound:

You can come to Africa for any number of reasons. But if you come here for the music, you’ll go home fulfilled. You will go home deeply satisfied, you’ll go home with ideas. . . you’ll go home with a clear idea of what we represent as Africans. [. . .] We are a community that lives according to the beat of the drum. [. . .] We no longer need the West to validate our music. . . we appreciate it when it happens, but we take pride in what we do because it’s forever evolving (cited in Mazaza, 2021).

This statement, again, expresses the resistance against being dominated by sonic traditions from the West. As a call for the recognition of pan-African forms of identity and agency, sound artists thus play a crucial role in redefining cultural avenues of decolonisation in the wake of centuries-long histories of domination and inequality, both materially and symbolically.

Mediating sonic amnesia

What stands out throughout our analysis is the ways in which the project participants are able to use sonic means to evoke what they perceive has been lost, forgotten and erased by colonial power. They tend to evoke notions of social cohesion and community under threat by external rule and use their soundscapes to counter such forms of amnesia. The (re)activation of community memories are part and parcel of this endeavour to remember. This sense of forgetting is a sentiment shared by both the male participants in our project and also articulated by female artist Moonchild Sannelly:

One thing that holds us back as a country is that we don’t know our own power. We all come from a generation where our parents needed permission to be Black, let alone be outside. [. . .] And those things don’t disappear overnight, we are going to have to be the kind of parents to change that (cited in Mazaza, 2021).

In a similar vein and also problematising the issue of ‘forgetting’, Participant 5 recalls that the elders used to play musical instruments that originated in Africa, but as young children who were educated in Western pedagogies, such instruments were never recognised as musical instruments. Instead, the focus was on Western violins, pianos and other instruments familiar to European publics – which in turn superseded knowledge of more traditional instruments. Having said that, there was a strong sense of agency among the participating sound artists in that they have clear visions of how such forms of forgetting can be sonically addressed. For instance, Participant 10 reiterates that in order to mediate sonic amnesias, it is important to have conversations with the elders in the communities, and to learn from them:

(P#10)

I was taught by the community elders, they carry the songs from generation to generation. These are oral traditions but sometimes they are put down and written. They are important as they represent something powerful hat happened in the past. Like the song ‘shoot the boer’ [a struggle song used during the apartheid period at political rallies meaning to shoot state agents] this was a powerful struggle song and now [Julius] Malema is using it for politics but there is a reason it gets so much attention, the song is powerful. The court ruled it is not wrong to sing it as it does not mean shoot people but it means take down the powers.

Participants 1, 2 and 3 reiterate that African instruments provide a sense of identity and highlight that those are usually made from ‘nature itself’, alluding to the organic connections between society and ecology. To these musicians, music and nature go hand in hand. Collapsing Truax’s somewhat artificial distinction between keynote sounds, sound signals and sound marks, Participant 3 provides the example of rain falling on the earth and states that this in itself can be regarded as music, with a connection to the land itself. The artists understand this connection to the land and the making of music of instruments of the land as deeply engrained in African identity:

(P#2)

Look, for me, to be honest. When I had a dream of becoming a musician, I never imagined myself playing African instruments. But now, I realize it is where I should start. Because, no.1 I can relate to them. I can understand them better.

(P#5)

What is interesting is the issue of land. You know, yo, it’s so deep man. It’s so deep. Because now you realise that if all these instruments are made out of a tree, and you need a land to plough, or to plant the trees and you know, there’s different trees that grows in different locations you know, so even if you can be given a piece of land you know, you might not get the tree that produces a certain sound because of its elsewhere. [. . .] So as long as we don’t have [land], if we don’t attend the land issue, we’ll stop making music.

These statements reflect a rejection of the colonial distinction between nature and culture and instead propose a framework in which one emerges from the other. This can, in a way, be understood as a rejection of forms of colonial modernity and capitalism that frame alleged ‘progress’ as the capturing and taming of nature and instead propose a more interconnected understanding of ecology through sound. In this, the focus on nature is a crucial element countering forms of amnesia and forgetting.

In this nuanced view of human and environmental interactions, Participant 2 shares that traditional instruments reflect this identity by producing natural sounds that embody the rhythms of the land. Participant 5 adds that these sounds inherently connect to their place of origin. Participant 3 notes that African instruments connect individuals spiritually through melodies inherited from ancestors, beyond the constraints of language. He describes African music as ‘dark’, filled with stories of oppression, which may not resonate with those unfamiliar with such experiences. Thus, these soundscapes do more than evoke a romanticised past; they also encapsulate how colonialism has moulded society and the diverse forms of cultural resistance that have emerged. These sounds carry deep-seated struggles that are recognisable only to those acquainted with their specific histories, allowing the soundscapes to subtly convey political messages to insiders while obscuring them from outsiders. Again, these examples show that this decolonial endeavour is not about restoring alleged forms of pre-colonial purity. Instead, they point to the importance of remembering ways of doing and resisting as a way to mobilise the community – an inherently political process. Participant 4 even suggests that the material used in traditional instruments could be improved to produce better sounds. Having said that, only he and Participant 5 suggest that African instruments and African sounds would benefit from collaboration with Western materials and inputs. Importantly, Participant 5 sees this fusion of African and Western sounds as needing to be on equal footing, instead of Western instruments being regarded as superior. In a way, this is a question about how to best mobilise community action in response to what colonial violence has done to those communities:

(P#4)

It doesn’t matter. We can still pull our strings there.

In this, Participant 5 argues that the perception of African instruments in general should not be regarded as inferior to their Western counter-parts:

(P#5)

[the perception is]. . .it’s [African instruments] something old. Its something from the bushes, its something uncivilized. You know, but here are two families, meeting and making music you know. An African instrument, and a Western instrument. They all a family of instrument section.

Participant 6 indicates that for him, the drum in particular represents an African sound, similar to a ‘heartbeat of a family’. To him, the drum acts as a womb from which African music can be born. Music can be used for healing in this way, or for ritualistic experiences that crosses over to spirituality and aesthetics. Indeed, Participant 9 refers to African instruments and African music as opening a spiritual plane for those participating in the remembrance. Here, Participant 6 alludes to the sacredness of a drum and a return to African spiritualities:

(P#6)

I said to a lot of my African people that once we are, we remember who we are you know, we make it a duty that each and every family in Africa should have its own drum. And each and every community should have its own drum. In as much as every household in Africa has got a bible, why are we not so with a drum? . . . Even: sort of like communicates a particular frequency which re-aligns the spirit with the body.

Such sentiments of the need to connect with spirituality are echoed by some of the South African female dance musicians we looked at, too. ‘Lizwi’, for instance, refers to her ancestors as a key inspiration for her wound work, arguing that there is a need for people ‘to know and understand what the feel of raw African music is’ (cited in Mazaza, 2021). This approach calls for the crucial role of ancestors in shaping sonic forms of agency, coupled with the sense of being part of a wider African tradition of music-making, as Thandi Draai confirms: ‘Ah man, there’s just something so majestic about African women in the dance scene . . . listen to Toshi, Tabia, Lizwi, Nobuhle, Mzulu Paqa, Khensy, Nana Atta, Bonj . . . the list is endless. Their music is rich in tradition, culture and spirituality, and that’s powerful’ (cited in Mazaza, 2021).

The turn the African spiritualities indeed seems to be a guiding theme for many of the project participants as a way of reclaiming ownership over music and identity more generally:

(P#7)

Sometimes the knowledge that we’ve been taught by the Western society, because now, they teach us their ways, and for so long we focus on them. Now when you go back to your own community where you have to get rid of the knowledge of everything that you got taught from the Western society, instead you use it there and you start critiquing the music. . . .And also these things come in most cases, they came as a calling. We use music in African tradition, not only just for celebrations. But a lot of things, I mean perform rituals and music. The right of passage when [vernacular], there’s music. You communicate with your ancestors, there’s music you understand?

Again, this statement reflects the extent to which the sound work acts as a political form of resistance against what is seen as threatening African traditions. Although this may read as a tendency to essentialise pre-colonial identities, it is perhaps rather an attempt to reclaim agency in a context in which it was taken away externally through forms of cultural and pedagogical imposition – all part of the colonial project. The ability to evoke seemingly forgotten sonic memories is then a way of activating political agency to express rejection of forms of cultural superimposition.

Participant 9 relates this to feelings of liberation and the agency to determine one’s own sonic environment:

(P#9)

I feel free brother. I feel free because the freedom that I have is the freedom to play without you know feeling like shy or without feeling judged and I feel free that I can express myself and embrace my culture. You know. And I embrace my craft as a mbira player. Brah, like for me, that’s freedom and not also, minding about what people say. Because you know, a lot of people have different opinions when it comes to our traditional instruments. Some because, of they’ve been brain washed, they have got misconceptions of the mbira, they think that ok, it has to do with demonic whatever. So for them, they feel like for anything holy, it has to be guitars, piano, organs, that’s Western. So anything that has to do with Africanism or traditions, indigenous knowledge, system of, our own people. They regard them as backwards, they’re inferior. But for me, I see that as gold. Its, ja. This is treasure. . . .Yeah, ja. I have that a lot. You know like, in the spiritual realm, I travel spaces like, through intergalactic spaces with infinite possibilities, because even I can play with my eyes closed, blindfolded. I can travel. In a way I meditate, you know, and I meditate and I levitate and come back, back and forth. So for me I’m able to send a multitude of thoughts and waves to the next person on the other hand. And also, they are able to receive and I can feel the energy. . . . music brings life. Its life. Because music its rhythm.

The freedom to produce sonic material, to be able to travel and to determine your own fate corresponds to notions of liberation from colonial violence. In a landscape where political options are limited and mobility continues to be constrained for various reasons, sonic art may offer an opportunity to project such desires aesthetically. The sound clips the project participants produced therefore offer insights into the ways in which oppression materialises in people’s everyday lives as well as the exit routes they devise themselves. This, however, does not mean that this resistance necessarily comes with all guns blazing. Instead, the artists often rely on the strategic use of silence in how they communicate their politics. Indeed, according to Pfeifer et al (2020), silence is not a mere byproduct of music, but an essential component of music (and thus often used for therapeutic goals). Importantly, silence can be as powerful as noise and an important way of dealing with grief and trauma (Eastmond and Mannergren Selimovic, 2012). With this being said, for many musicians in the current project, silence can be just as effective as the loudness that can be sonically produced. Some participants talked about this:

(P#8)

There is so much loudness, or you can find a message in silence.

A conversation between Participant 1 and 9 went as follows:

(P#9)

Even silence also. Even silence is music. That’s why we need rest at some point. You’re playing a bar, and needs rest. Its music. For it being there in that minimal, you know [musical terminology], that, you could hear that the sweet. . .

(P#1)

That pause

(P#9)

Yeas, that pause, that sweet.

Similarly, Participant 10 reiterated the meaning of silence:

(P#10)

Silence is never really silent, there are always sounds –there is power in silence, there is a message in that but there is nothing like real silence.

This statement echoes some of the developments in the literature around the politics of silence, where silence has increasingly come to be considered as embodying a degree of ambiguity. While, in the sense of ‘silencing’, it can signal forms of oppression and powerlessness (Ferguson, 2003: 52–53), it can also represent a resistance to participate in the dominant politics of the day (Ferguson, 2003: 54ff). Silences can carry deep meanings, reflect on absences, express the ‘unspeakable’ and represent a way of dealing with issues that are difficult to overcome. In their potential to create such ambiguity around unspeakable narratives, silences create spaces of agency and allow for political action. In that, they become part of the making of community and how local politics play out. Accordingly, in experimenting with different sounds and silences, the project participants actively remember the ways in which colonial rule has tried to supersede other forms of social life and interaction and design creative ways of responding to such attempts at erasure. Their sonic propositions carry ambitions to shape their own sonic landscape in ways different from colonialism and reflect their agency in determining their surrounding ecologies from a position of engagement and power. Here, too, silence is ambiguous: it signals both the erasure of pre-colonial identities and the subtle forms of sonic resistance against this erasure.

Mourning, threats and pathways to restoration

In our analysis of sound clips and interviews, we uncovered a narrative highlighting the deep connection between music, sound and cultural identity within the community. This relationship between auditory experiences, cultural values and political mobilisation transcends mere artistic expression, demonstrating sound’s powerful role in shaping and expressing community identities. These soundscapes reveal a nostalgia for cherished traditions, expressed as a sense of loss, encapsulating both a longing for pan-African unity and the significant role these elements play in the collective memory of a community which mourns the loss of what they view as core values of their existence. In that sense, the interviews expose threats to these communities, from neoliberal exploitation of African sounds to the appropriation of sonic forms through colonial legacies. These challenges are articulated through the sound clips, which act as forms of resistance and call for action against these forces. Sound artists propose strategies to revive and strengthen community spirit, envisioning a future free from colonial impacts through sound-driven socio-cultural advocacy.

The expressed nostalgia often stems from colonial violence, portraying a collective desire for an authentic African sound identity. Participant 2, for instance, describes music as a crucial tool for the oppressed to share their stories, emphasising its role as a protest medium during the apartheid era. This ongoing narrative highlights the enduring impact of ‘struggle songs’ and their integral part in African cultural identity, underlining the persistent loss and resilience within these communities.

Nonetheless, it is crucial to avoid romanticising such expressions of nostalgia as they carry within them their own hierarchies and inequalities. In our sample of analysis, this means that, while the interviewees were acutely aware of the racial inequalities shaping the music industry in a colonial context, their own sound clips did not pay attention to the intersectional marginalisation of Black women specifically. This is something that shapes the music scene globally, as female music artist Kamo Mphela points out. She argues that women ‘need to work twice as hard to be recognised as more than just a gender’ (cited in Mazaza, 2021). Fellow musician Toshi adds that ‘[m]usic has been a man’s world. Especially for women, the first thing they want to do is exploit you, diminish you, sexualise you. But you have a role to play. You have power. You have the power to teach people how to treat you’ (cited in Mazaza, 2021). Overall, it seems that the female artists are fairly critical of such forms of nostalgia where these are used to legitimise the continued subordination of women. Their focus suggests a more future-oriented approach where they seek out spaces in which this gendered inequality can be dismantled sonically. Music artist Jackie Queens suggests the following:

In the aftermath of BLM and some really major sexual harassment cases and a greater focus on inequality in the dance music space, what’s remarkable to see is how there’s a greater sense of urgency, perhaps. I’m seeing more women coming together to advocate for themselves and for each other. The work is becoming more visible and intensified and it’s gotten to a point where it’s becoming difficult to deny that something needs to be done and that women are taking control (cited in Mazaza, 2021).

These examples show the extent to which sonic nostalgias are by no means uniform, but consist of intersectional power differentials themselves. Community voices are not immune from such inequalities, but act as important generators of competing ideals of transformation, proposed as a way of dealing with the legacies of colonialism. New emerging forms of inequality can be the result of this search. While this does not delegitimise the search for decoloniality in art by any means, it does point to the need to engage with its competing visions and to be mindful of the exclusions any form of social representation risks carrying. Indeed, sound art, too, amplifies and mediates these competing visions and gives them public presence.

Forces jeopardising communities and proposals for restoration

It becomes clear that colonialism and its aftermath have significantly impacted the soundscape of African societies. The insidious impact of neoliberal exploitation, exportation and co-optation of sonic forms is evident throughout the interviews. Participant 5, for instance, suggests that African instruments and sounds were deemed as ‘something old. . .something from the bushes, its something uncivilized’, highlighting the effect of colonial perceptions on the African soundscape. Furthermore, Participant 5 discusses how Western pedagogical approaches emphasised the importance of Western instruments, resulting in African instruments being overlooked or even forgotten. The sound structures the latter embody, but also their interconnectedness with an ecosystem that shapes the politics of communities, have been subject to amnesias that the artists in our project have sought to revive. They do so in a field of tension between modernity and traditionalism. Participant 4, for instance, alludes to the potential enhancements that can be made to traditional instruments, suggesting a need for evolution, while others emphasise the need for authenticity. These projections of future communities are based on imagined pasts. They express how community actors mourn losses that occur over time and how they view ideal ways of social life – which are often inspired by versions of the past as it is remembered. Sounds are part and parcel of such forms of remembrance and attempts to uncover what seems to have been marginalised from the public sphere.

Central to the interviews that we held is the call for a return to African roots. Participants unanimously emphasise the significance of African instruments in reclaiming their own sonic identities in the wake of colonialism and its lingering effects. As Participant 1 and 2 highlight, these instruments offer a connection to the land and are a representation of African identities. Moreover, we note a strong call for embracing the natural elements. As Participant 6 cautions against incorporating synthetic materials, like plastic into traditional instruments, it reflects the larger sentiment of preserving authenticity. The significance of traditional practices, oral traditions and learning from community elders is also emphasised, serving as a reminder of the vast reservoir of cultural knowledge that can aid in sonic remembrance when communities feel threatened by outside forces. They may also respond with silence to respond to such threats, as pointed out by Participants 8, 9 and 10. Rather than a mere absence of sound, silence is presented as a powerful sonic element, filled with meaning and reflecting a nuanced understanding of sound and its social functions.

In essence, the artists of our project propose a multidimensional approach: re-embracing African instruments, valuing silence and understanding the rich traditions passed down through generations. They advocate for a balance where traditional African values coexist with modernity, without compromising on what they view as African sound identities. The narratives and reflections of the sound artists illuminate a journey of sonic rediscovery, aesthetic mobilisation, bridging past and present and forging a path towards a future where African sonic identity is celebrated, preserved and evolved, and where it acts as a platform on which Western forms of power and dominance can be countered. Yet, where they fail to secure broad buy-in from the wider community, as illustrated through the marginalisation of women in the wider sound art scene, they risk proposing visions of change that only work for a limited section of society. This may be due to the fact that the possible political outcomes of this sound work may be indirect and long-term at best, so not everyone will perceive sonic activism as worthy of their time and energy, particularly in the precarious circumstances that many members of the community live in. In addition, existing power inequalities within such communities, stratified by hierarchies of gender and origin, among others, limit the possibilities of participation for some more than others. The proposals made by the community mobilised in this sound project must therefore not be read as universally representative and valid as they do carry and amplify their own internal power hierarchies, but instead as an attempt to mobilise political agency where it has been taken away, and an ongoing negotiation between the different members of the community as well as their global relations.

Conclusion

This article has explored the dynamics of soundscapes in the urban centre of Johannesburg, highlighting the significant role that sound plays in the creation of cultural identities, memory and decolonisation. These sonic explorations shed light on the experiences of historically marginalised groups as they manage colonial legacies, with sound serving as an important tool for challenging the colonial hierarchies created by existing structures of knowledge (Mbembe, 2016: 40–41). The importance of these auditory reservoirs is heightened by their trans-local and even worldwide reverberation, as indicated by music trends that cross international borders. The interviews conducted for this research demonstrate how musical narratives are globally interconnected and play a significant role in shaping community identities beyond the geographical confines of Johannesburg.

We have thus shown the importance of recognising how memory is constructed sonically. Sound art, in this respect, is a way of shaping the memory of the past for grievances of the present – such as the quest for decolonisation – but also carries social stratifications forward into the future. Sound artists play essential roles, not just documenting aural experiences but also critically contesting dominant concepts of memory, identity and historiography. Their activities are not merely archival; they are transformative acts of resistance against established hegemonies, rebuilding histories in the face of globalisation and ongoing decolonisation efforts. As a result, sound art serves as a dynamic medium for memory reclamation that defies standard boundaries and techniques. In the sonic tales produced through the DEPA project, the interaction of past, present and aspirational futures gives a deeply polyphonic method to interpreting history and community formations. As global movements for justice, acknowledgement and decolonisation gain traction, the importance of interacting with these sonic histories as markers of memory-making becomes especially clear. Yet within such efforts, as we have shown, it is crucial to be attentive to subtle and open forms of inequality that risk permeating claims of liberation. The inclusion of a broad spectrum of society and attention to continuing forms of dominance in the aftermath of direct colonial rule is crucial in this search for historical and social justice. On the one hand, our analysis showed an interest in working with ancestors, legacies and pan-African forms of spirituality among both men and women. On the other hand, unlike what many of the female sound artists feel, our male participants did not raise the issue of gender equality or gender-based violence as crucial in their quest for decolonial sound work. This is a symptom of the fact that women continue to be underrepresented in this space. We did see in the project how sound work can become a vehicle of political mobilisation and resistance, yet with diverse priorities. Therefore, while soundscapes provide a rich perspective on social life, their meanings and resonances are varied among its creators and audiences and are entangled with globally-enshrined hierarchies. Scholars and practitioners must thus recognise these links in order to gain meaningful knowledge of the role of sound in constructing histories, memories and identities.