jazz against apartheid virtual dialogue session
01/12/2023
Jazz against Apartheid founder Jürgen Leinhos and Frankfurt publisher Elisabeth Ehrhorn together with author of the Story of South African Jazz, Struan Douglas were delighted to be joined by Tali Nates founding director of the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre in the first ever hosting of Jazz against Apartheid in Gauteng Province, City of Johannesburg.
Tali Nates is founder and director of the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Center. She is chair of three centers in South Africa looking at education, memory, and connections to Holocaust and Genocide in the 20th century. Her father was a holocaust survivor. She is also a scholar, a writer, curator and teacher. JHGC is currently doing a project about hate speech, antisemitism, racism, and xenophobia on social media and supported by the Norwegian Government.
Tali extended an invitation to Stephen Naron, director of the Fortunoff video archive for Holocaust testimonies at Yale University. This collection is exclusively video recordings, video testimonies of survivors and witnesses to the holocaust recorded since 1979. Stephen is director there since 2015, but has worked with the collection as archivist and consultant since 2003.
Tali and Stephen are currently working together for an ambitious conference in 2024 to mark 30 years of democracy in South Africa, 30 years since the Rwandan Genocide and 35 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The Fortunoff video archive has a recording studio in New Haven. However, since the pandemic have only had one recording session and Stephen is spearheading a project to utilise the 10, 12, 000 hours of recorded material in scholarship and education.
Fortunoff has recently done a project at Yale Archives using music as a form of coming to terms with the past.
Stephen described: “Just through fate we met Zisl Slepovitch, who’s both an ethnomusicologist and just an incredible composer and performer. He’s world class and his ensemble includes some of the most incredible musicians I’ve ever seen perform. it is as close to an authentic representation of the period. The song was written. Then they perform, they practice, and they go in the studio and record these songs. It came out so beautifully.”
Also in the discussion was Benji Liebmann, a former lawyer and business person, and now artist and founding director of NIROX an artist’s residency and sculpture park, situated in the cradle of humankind. NIROX is in the process of expanding by establishing another artists residency, focussing on collaborative creativity that has an impact on social issues.
The discussion was organised by jazz writer Struan Douglas. As author of Story of South African Jazz (SOSAJ) Book series, Struan is a founding director of the SOSAJ audio-visual project, Sausage Films and has worked extensively on the power of South African jazz music to create change and healing and bring people together.
The discussion begins with the welcoming of Jürgen Leinhos as
Jürgen says:
“Frankfurt is especially important for this project, Jazz Against Apartheid, because it already had a strong movement against apartheid, driven and supported by churches and by unions. In this context, there were churches and it was a free cultural scene.
As Kultur Im Ghetto, we wanted to give this movement an artist contribution, not just reaching the head, but reaching the heart as well.
Elisabeth Erhorn translates from German to English:
Jürgen researched what musicians were already engaged in anti-apartheid movement, and they found Johnny Dyani, who was an exile from South Africa, living in Denmark and in Sweden. They got in contact and they created Jazz Against Apartheid, Jazz Gegen Apartheid in Frankfurt. The first series of concerts started in 1986, but at the very first concert, in Berlin Johnny Dyani died, almost on stage of a heart attack.
Jürgen gathered musicians together, not just South African’s, but also from the exile community in Europe, and they continued. Since 1986 till today, Jazz Against Apartheid continued with more than a hundred concerts, mostly in Frankfurt, Darmstadt, but also in Switzerland and in Basel. Once, even in Oakland, in California, and last year, premiered in South Africa, in the Eastern Cape, in Duncan Village, East London, and in King Williams Town, in the Eastern Cape, where Steve Biko originated.
I am elisabeth, and I literally stumbled upon Jürgen when I came to Frankfurt as an intern at a daily newspaper. They were in the middle of creating this jazz against apartheid series. I was very lucky enough to meet Johnny Dyani. I got hooked on the music, on this improvised music because what I saw was a utopia coming true of people from different perspectives playing music together without any kind of skin color barrier, language barrier, social hierarchy. I am a very idealistic person still, and it still is a source of wonder that it’s possible at moments to be together without conflicts.
I would like to tell you of an experience that Jürgen and I had yesterday. We were at a meeting at the historical museum in Frankfurt. It was, the occasion of the anniversary of 20 years of stumbling stones in Frankfurt. This is an initiative started by a German artist. It puts on those little concrete blocks, a little brass metal, a little sign, 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters, giving the name and the birth date of those who were deported and driven out of their homes.
They are placed on the sidewalks very close to the entrance of the apartments, houses, living quarters of those who were driven out and murdered during the 1933 to 1945 Nazi period.
Here in Frankfurt yesterday, they were celebrating 20 years. This is an initiative that for me, is the epitome of what we want to do with a living memory and experience. Because, it brings together, the people, the survivors families. When the ceremony happens and the stones are laid, the survivors families come and for the first time, they meet in Germany.
Kindergarten children, school children come together, their teachers, the people living next door to those who are no longer there, and then there are musicians coming, there are artists coming, and it’s kind of a celebration that happens with those laying down the stumbling stone. And, literally, you stumble in Frankfurt across 2, 000 stumbling stones, which means 2,000 people are remembered in such a way here in Frankfurt.
And this is what the rabbi said: When you do stumble across those stones, you bow your head in order to read the names. And, what you do is you arm people by that gesture of bowing your head for a moment.
I find this is an extremely touching initiative by an artist who started this about 25 years ago in Germany. By now there are more than 100, 000 stones. There are 2, 000 alone in Frankfurt, and Jürgen had nine of those stones laid down for a gypsy family that was driven out.
- What are your experiences in preserving the cultural heritage? what are good ways to preserve and to build up this cultural heritage? what venues do you choose?
- What would be your advice for jazz against apartheid, are trying to, to build up this cultural heritage? Can you give us advices in how we can continue with this work?
Struan responds:
As a jazz journalist, I can tell you the impact of an uncovering people such as Johnny Dyani.
He continues:
This is the first ever anthology of a South African musician. First ever! It’s jazz that fought the struggle against apartheid. And today the struggle is still real. That’s the point really about the urgency of this work. I do feel we just have a slither of time now with, Jürgen and Peggy Luswazi and others. They’ve really held this cultural memory for 40 years, this incredible archive, now we need to bring it to the next generation.
Stephen Naron responds:
One thing of course, that is right at hand is to conduct oral histories with the individuals who have played such an important role in the establishment of the movement.
Audio technology or video technology could build a small oral history archive around Jazz Against Apartheid.
We could happily provide suggestions about how to do that in the simplest way possible.
What are the materials in the archive?
Do you have large numbers of recordings, audio recordings of concerts?
Do you have documents related to the establishment of the program?
What is the archive?
While you’re doing the oral history work, reach out to these individuals and begin to pull together their personal papers and their objects with the goal of imagining a vision or collection that could be turned into a traveling exhibit, that could live somewhere at a national institution of memory.
Another feasible addition to keeping the Nachwuchsförderung is finding the people to continue the actual performance.
The songbook is a great idea. that’s something we want to do for songs from testimonies. We have like 60 songs now. We really would like to do songbooks as well so that people can actually then perform the music. One of the things that is really exciting about our project is you get to hear the song, see the performance, but you also you learn about the survivor who sang the song in their testimony. You get to see the survivor. You get to see the historical context around the song together with the song. We did a song. We did a series of videos where we introduced the song, telling us what the significance of it was. We saw a clip from the survivor. Then he talked about his aesthetic choices about the composition. Then we had a scholar who actually then commented on the significance of the lyrics, the significance of the song. We aimed at a general public.
Something like that, either in written form or audio visual form, would share that context that maybe some of these artists have. This would be really valuable to build that bridge with the next generation.
Tali adds:
It’s great that Stephen is here because it is really about capturing the testimonies, compiling everything and, and doing it as quickly as possible. It is really starting with you, Jürgen, and you, Elisabeth. I mean, even what you shared with us for two minutes now, but also what you shared with me last year when I met you first. This has to be recorded, it has to be captured. This is history. It will not be known unless we capture it.
We spoke many times about an exhibition that can be created, clips that can be involved. An exhibition doesn’t have to be just visual. It can have audio. It can have QR codes where you can listen. It can also be on the website.
It can also inspire the now generation. We do quite a lot of things in our workshops around photo voice and soundscapes. You listen to something from the past, or you read something from the past, and you can connect to yourself by taking photos on your phone and by recording on your phone. These are techniques we used in the past about Rwanda, about Xenophobia, about the Holocaust, about South Africa. We actually just finished a training program in Philippines about learning from the past to connect to today. It is not expensive.
Catherine and Mdu can teach those methodologies, and you can include it on the website. These are just some very simple examples of how do you bring the past to the now using phones and using qr codes.
Elisabeth adds:
The resources we have here already, which is the memories of Jürgen, for example, and the musicians with whom he worked. Maybe NIROX foundation could be the place where you said the collaborative creativity of artists can come together and we can do some of the recording of the musicians and some of the recording of the people who contributed to this. Maybe that could be a place where this flows together and we have a one or two day workshop or three day workshop or something where we can come up with these little stones that make up the foundation of an archive.
Benji responds:
That’s exactly the kind of thing that we do and enjoy to do. We value the archives, but we’re not an archival organization. We’re an organization about today, and about changing the way people are in their lives today. We are not really an archivally orientated organization. We tend to look at the present and not at the past, not because we think that the past is not important, but simply because that’s the handwriting we chose. We would always be looking at whatever you present us with a view to its impact on our community, not just our local community, we regard ourselves as within a global community. What impact can we have, on life today and going forward, rather than looking back on it? How we can use the lessons of apartheid to change the way that we deal with the problems that we face today?
In South Africa many of the maladies that Apartheid sought to cure have not been cured. I see the value of your organization as a door opener to communities.
Elisabeth continues:
This is something which happens now, because the music happens now and it does something with is now and for the future. It changed the way we perceive the world, and what is possible in this world if we cling to this artistic utopia.
Struan interjects:
2024 is a very significant year with the 30 years of democracy and 35 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. What brings us together is that we all want to bring change? Would you contextualize that change as something we can all work with?
Tali responds:
Let’s think about how we all come together when stephen and others from Yale are coming to South Africa to speak about 30 years of democracy, 30 years of Rwanda, 35 years of the fall of the berlin wall. We are talking together about this meeting point.
Just open our eyes and ears for possibilities of partnerships as the significant year is coming 2024, 2025, and look for possibilities to come together. That is my advice. Sadly, I gave up on saving the world. Our world is very wounded at the moment. It’s actually hard to breathe.
Stephen clarifies:
I think change is too broad a topic. One that can bring us all everybody in this zoom room together, regardless of where we’re coming from is, the interdisciplinary approach to problems.
It’s not just the historian, or, the social scientist, but it’s also the artist, the musician, the ethnomusicologist. There are all sorts of different approaches to the world’s problems and trying to understand them and what the interdisciplinary approach can bring us.
This sort of idea that some of these borders are a lot more fluid than people think utilises the comparative lens. Holocaust and Apartheid are not the same thing, but an essential part of knowledge production is done through the process of comparative study.
Pointing out the differences and the similarities, the continuities, and the breaks between all of these events, that’s something that can also tie us together.
I don’t believe in transforming the world or changing the world for the better, but I do believe in small interventions that mean something symbolically, like these stolpersteine, right? The stolpersteine are a tiny little piece of brass in the floor, in the ground in front of a house. It’s a small intervention, but to some people it means a lot.
If we can find a different way within each one of us, in the end, it’s got to make some difference. We can’t change others, mostly, we can only change ourselves.
If resources were endless it would be wholly appropriate in my mind to bring jazz against apartheid to do a performance at Yale. Why couldn’t someone working with testimony be a contemporary artist NIROX?
Struan adds:
Thank you, Tali. That for me has been totally mind opening with, working with you, because you’re not really specifically from the jazz space, but it’s just opens up the whole conversation to allow people from all these different walks of life to come into the same space.
Stephan confirms:
Democracy is supposed to be or certainly it’s got to be a part of it. I don’t want to be in a democracy that doesn’t have that.
