The Centre for the Less Good Idea is an interdisciplinary incubator space for the arts based in Maboneng, Johannesburg

 THINKING IN INSTRUMENTS

From 5 to 9 May 2025, SO | The Academy for the Less Good Idea hosted Thinking In Instruments, which brought together musicians Zawadi YaMungu, Bongiwe Lusizi, Gontse Makhene, and Victor Gama for a five-day workshop and investigation into the meeting of indigenous African instruments, vocalisation and a selection of instruments made by Gama. 

The workshop culminated in The Open Moment, a public showing and opportunity for an audience to witness the material, experiments, and discoveries made throughout the mentorship.

INSTRUMENT BIOGRAPHIES

On day one of the workshop, The Centre’s Momenteur, Athena Mazarakis, facilitates an exercise in introducing the instruments – their histories, materials, and functions – that yields rich reflections on each musician’s relationship to their instruments and the music they make. 

For the percussionist Gontse Makhene, the loss of his collection of instruments to a fire a few years ago led to a new, growing collection of instruments – djembes, urdus, congas – gifted to him by friends, collaborators, and peers in the industry. “So, each time I play these instruments, there is a kind of collaboration taking place between me and all of these people,” says Makhene.  

Victor Gama’s instruments are all hybrid objects, made by him. Referencing Global South astronomy, geology, and speculative narratives around history, travel and more, Gama’s instruments are stories in and of themselves. Built by Gama, these instruments carry their references and inspiration in their design — the acrux, for example, uses the Southern half of a sphere as its base, while the Toha is inspired on the collective nests of the sociable weaver birds, and is playable by two people at once. 

Bongiwe Lusizi, better known as Mthwakazi, grows her own instruments. “I call it Agrimusicology,” she says, explaining the relationship to land and agriculture that comes through in her practice. She uses the calabash as an example, a natural material that can be used for food, storage, and even for music through the uhadi. 

Zawadi Ya Mungu leads with language, explaining the different names we have for instruments in Southern Africa, and how they differ regionally, culturally, linguistically, and musically. For Ya Mungu, music is also a means of tapping into a creative, spiritual, affirming, and healing realm. “The instrument is a friend to take on long journeys, but also something of a protector – it can be used to protect yourself – so it’s an instrument with many functions. I know it as a walking instrument, something that is played on long journeys.”   

MUSICAL DIALOGUES AND SONGS AS LIBRARIES

While day one and two of the workshop see the musicians learning about each other’s instruments and also discovering certain musical families – Mthwakazi’s uhadi, Gama’s dino, and Ya Mungu’s Umakhwenyana – day three comes with a prompt from The Centre’s Impresario, Neo Muyanga: Think of a traditional song that’s played on your instrument and teach it to the others. 

What emerges is a simple and generative exchange. As each musician performs their own refrain, and the refrain of their fellow musicians, there is a transposition of sound, rhythm, history and story onto each instrument. Here, songs become libraries carrying history, culture, politics, and ideas. Grounding them, and further linking them, is a shared connection to the land, through both material and function.   

As a refrain finds its way onto each instrument, certain restrictions, such as limited range, notes, and tones, become fruitful provocations and opportunities to improvise or reinvent. Ultimately, it’s an exercise in teaching, responding, learning and conversing, where rhythm and language change, and stories emerge and fall away, swell, and evolve.  

EMBODIED INSTRUMENTS

As Mazarakis notes: “There is a collective embodiment and learning in the room during the moments that these songs are being played and transposed. It’s an act of embodying the instrument first, and then the refrain, which transmits its histories, languages, and narratives.” 

Similarly, there is a reinterpretation and subsequent translation that happens through the embodiment of these songs and instruments from across the African continent. This is not translation as a secondary act, but as a methodology of collaboration and music-making – one that is not in pursuit of an authentic reproduction, but a production of new meaning, and new connections. 

THE OPEN MOMENT

On Friday 9 May, The Centre for the Less Good Idea hosted The Open Moment | Thinking in Instruments. 

This public moment followed a week of workshopping that saw YaMungu, Lusizi, Makhene, and Gama collaborate and investigate the meeting of African instruments and vocalisation, and sharing and building on each other’s creative processes, methodologies, and ways of working. 

The Open Moment provided an opportunity for audiences to witness the individual practices of each musician, as well as the research and collaborative processes that took place during the week.

Key exercises and discoveries from the week were shared, including the activity of quoting and transposing one another’s traditional songs, the notion of circularity in music and history, and songs as archives, portals and facilitators of conversation between different parts of the country and the continent. 

— David Mann

CREDITS

MUSICIANS | Victor Gama, Zawadi YaMungu, Bongiwe Lusizi & Gontse Makhene
MOMENTEUR FOR THE SO ACADEMY | Athena Mazarakis 

All photographs by Zivanai Matangi