![]() ![]() ![]() You can hear it in some of the very extreme moments in the music – it feels like a release, like you’re on top of a mountain and you’re screaming. This tricky method, says Johannesburg-based vocalist Nosisi Ngakane, “brought an interesting dynamic to the music because there was a heightened state of emotion that was happening. Afterwards, all the material was chopped up, rearranged, edited and woven back together in a lengthy, collaborative post-production phase for the final record. The London musicians heard and responded to their Joburg and Dakar counterparts and vice versa. The music from that day was edited down into workable pieces that were played to the rest of the musicians only at the next meeting in the studio two weeks later. “We tried to keep that synergy and that spirit and that energy across geography,” says Masondo. On the first day, though physically apart, the musicians in all the cities went into the studio to record on the same day. While shifting schedules and organisation took up the better part of the year, the bulk of the recording was done in just two days in 2020 – one in July and another one in August. However, the journey is proof of what endurance makes possible. Considering the number of musicians involved, the project was a logistical nightmare, with extensive back and forth over the two years. The idea was that a single band would be formed with 14 of the most interesting voices from the three cities. The project was created through the spirit of improvisation and a kind of cross-continental call and response. It was quite frustrating, especially because you feel like you have no control,” he says, adding that just to have an initial meeting took more than a week to arrange. “You’re living your own life, you have to squeeze things in, shift and bend. But now everybody’s literally on their own clock with all our time zones. “Obviously, being in London would have been much easier because we all would have met. “How do you carry on and do it anyway?” asks Nhlanhla Masondo, who runs Mushroom Hour Half Hour with partner Andrew Curnow and features as emcee Grandmaster Cap. (Images by Theodorah Ndlovu and Deedo Dakar Studio) From left, saxophonist Alabaster dePlume recording at the Total Refreshment Centre in London, kora player Tarang Cissokho in Dakar and journalist Emma Warren at the centre in London. Because of the restrictions dictated by the circumstances, a new way had to be found. But by the time funding and plans for the project were in place, the Covid-19 pandemic had begun. The plan was to gather musicians from Johannesburg and Dakar, Senegal, and travel to the hub to collaborate with musicians there. The idea was conceived in early 2019 by the Johannesburg-based collective Mushroom Hour Half Hour and the music hub Total Refreshment Centre, which is based in London, England. The story behind the album On Our Own Clock, released in early September, is one such ambitious undertaking.ĭrawing guidance and motivation from Toni Morisson’s concept of “unreasonable optimism” – as captured in her novel Jazz – the challenging process of creating a mammoth collaborative project has finally come to fruition after two years of hard work and disconnection. While not ideal for artists, this process opened up a space for new kinds of collaborations. Over the past year, many artistic happenings scheduled to occur in a physical locale had to be reconfigured for digital platforms. ![]() Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window).Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window).Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window).Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window). ![]()
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