... Often I can’t listen to music. It acts on my nerves. It makes one want to say a lot of sweet nonsense and stroke the heads of people who live in a filthy hell-hole, and yet can create such beauty

Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov (Lenin)

Speaking to a Dutch music journalist in his last interview before leaving to serve a term in jail in Lagos for his political activism, the iconoclastic composer and afrobeat chief priest, Fela Anikulapo Kuti once claimed, “Nigeria is not a producer. You could say the same thing for Africa as a whole and that is why it will continue to go downhill. We do not produce anything that is needed in the world. Just oil.” Fela’s fellow minstrel-in-arms, Hugh Masekela, released a record in 1976 entitled colonial man, where he seemed to lob a rather different series of objects at the same terrain when he sang: Cortez, he was a pirate, just like Christopher Columbus. He liked discovering. He was no friend of mine. Henry the navigator, a friend of Vasco da Gama, he loved geography. He was no friend of mine. Queeeeen Victoria, she built an empire. She loved to colonise. She was no friend of mine.”

About Neo Muyanga

Neo Muyanga – Composer, Librettist, Musician. (b.1974) Born in Soweto, Neo Muyanga grew up singing in choirs before starting formal music theory lessons and later dropping out of physics studies to pursue the Italian madrigal tradition in Trieste, Italy. Currently, his research and performance interests include investigations and explorations of the aesthetics of protest song, with a particular focus on opera within the black community in South Africa, and more broadly concerning the history of musical story-telling in the global south. Muyanga co-founded the acoustic soul duo, BLK Sonshine, with Masauko Chipembere in 1996, garnering a following throughout Southern Africa and other parts of the world while charting hit songs including “Born in a taxi”, “Building” and others.