Four trailblazing South African artists redefining the landscape

Despite, or perhaps because of the political, social and ecological tumult of this year, we’ve had another bumper year of extraordinary, innovative and ever-restless art in South Africa. We’ve had elegant, curious and delightful volumes released by the ever-expanding contingent of young poets on our shores.

We’ve also had the dynamic South African art gallery Southern Guild growing its international presence, curating exhibits by the likes of Terence Maluleke, Jozua Gerrard, Zizipho Poswa, Manyaku Mashilo and Zimbabwean Wycliffe Mundopa in Los Angeles, New York and Miami – championing the latest in modern African and South African visual art.

New music releases included visionary guitarist Derek Gripper’s latest album, A New African String Theory, created in collaboration with master kora player Ballaké Sissoko, and hip-hop fabulist S’Bo Gyre’s sonic call to arms, Altar Call. Guitar maestro Guy Buttery made his December announcement of Orchestrations, an album of orchestral renditions of selections from his rich catalogue, which will be launched in February 2025.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIQPfT_MiXs

Here are four artists to lock your ­aesthetic GPS on in the new year:

Filmmaker Jenna Cato Bass. (Photo: Kourosh Keshiri)

Jenna Cato Bass is no stranger to local – and, to a growing degree, attentive international – cineastes. Her 2021 film, Good Madam (Mlungu Wam), premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and rocks an 84% Certified Fresh rating at everyone and their aunt’s go-to movie review site, Rotten Tomatoes.

Bass has been carving out a singular filmmaking path since her self-produced 2014 directorial debut, Love the One You Love, and she’s had features either debuting or screened at Cannes, Sundance and the Berlin Film Festival. Her third feature, the feminist Western Flatland, opened the 2019 Berlinale Panorama. Bass is in prep for her next film, Future Tense, “a time-travel story set in the precolonial Cape”.

Cara Stacey, a musicologist, composer and multi-­instrumentalist, has forged twin career paths – academic and as performer – marked by musical generosity. The 2021 Standard Bank Young Artist for Music is known foremost for her use of various African bow instruments, while also playing the piano and several traditional African instruments like the mbira, ­uhadi, umrhube and budongo.

An artist and theorist who cherishes, explores and celebrates African instrumental traditions, Stacey is also a pioneer in wedding the traditional with the contemporary, from free-form improvisation with jazz and New Music ensembles to meshing traditional instruments and forms with electronica.

This year alone Stacey has performed with Juliana Venter and Carlo Mombelli; Playgroup (featuring Jill Richards, Jurgen Meekel and BJ Engelbrecht); and Garth Erasmus and Reza Khota in Swiss drummer and composer Martin Perret’s ensemble L’Anderer.

She took part in the British Forum for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference in Ireland and, in December, along with guitarist Keenan Ahrends, performed at the Goethe-Institut in Johannesburg with German accordionist Eva Zöllner.

Dancer and activist Darion Adams. (Photo: Oscar O’Ryan)

Dancer and artivist Darion Adams is a soul on a mission. Based in Manenberg in Cape Town, Adams is a multihyphenate creative (dancer, educator, choreographer, project manager et al.)

Their work is dedicated to reshaping narratives around identity politics and heritage, with a strong emphasis on expressing their queer identity within the context of their indigenous heritage.

Their most recent solo work, Stand TF Up, debuted at the Live Art Weekend at the Baxter Theatre Centre, and their films (in collaboration with Tania Vossgatter) were screened at this year’s POOL Movement Art Film Festival in Berlin.

Founding The AIM Society, a dance school and arts and culture hub, in Manenberg in January 2023, Adams says one of their main objectives is “building spaces of community for people in strategically undervalued communities”. The society endeavours to show “how art can play a pivotal role in the transformation of the people”.

In 2025, The AIM Society will also continue screening local features that represent stories of life in communities such as Manenberg that speak to the larger Cape Flats community.

An ensemble of three, raucous punk power trio Twenty One Children – guitarist Thulasizwe Nkosi, drummer Valentino “Jazz” Nkosi and vocalist Abdula Skink – have been blowing hair back since their rowdy inception in Soweto in 2023.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdw6YIyl6KY

Swiftly amassing an impassioned following, the innovators of noise and energy have lit up live music venues across Gauteng, becoming a mainstay at Smoking Kills in Melville, and recently introduced their merry tsunami of sound to crowds in Durban.

Stalwarts of the DIY ethos of the punk movement, they are forever hustling information and energy tapped from the chaos of daily life into new tracks and videos and EPs, forever propelling towards the next soundcheck, next recording, next gig.

Twenty One Children breathe a much-appreciated volatility into the live music circuit. They are planning to drop their full-length debut by the end of February, in time for their second birthday bash. DM

Mick Raubenheimer is a freelance arts writer.

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.