Anthology South Africa

Over the last decades, South Africa has become a new hub for exploratory music and sound art. There a community of practitioners of experimental, improvisational, and otherwise avant-garde musicians is growing each year with a focus on creating a supporting, nurturing environment. With increased public exposure to these alternative forms of musical creativity, the future of this experimentation is bright. Music festivals like SENSA (Sonic Exploration Network Southern Africa) and other collective initiatives like the organization Edge of Wrong, collaborative projects between South Africa and Norway for experimental musicians are contributing to this new movement of artists in Cape Town, Johannesburg, and other places, making possible these innovative music hybrids between African folk tradition, jazz, improvised music, drone music, experimental electronic, and everything in between and beyond. In the present anthology, Unexplained Sounds Group tries to follow the most interesting clues of this emerging scene. From the graduated and high skilled musicians who have been featured in prestigious festivals all around the world, to the subterranean DIY artists who utilize this hybridization and deconstruction of popular music genres, we see a new movement in music growing year by year. Many of these new musicians bring together the folk tradition of various indigenous Southern African musical instruments and other music languages, in the contemporary spirit of preservation and innovation.