{"id":57096,"date":"2020-08-12T16:41:09","date_gmt":"2020-08-12T15:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/?p=57096"},"modified":"2020-08-12T16:42:12","modified_gmt":"2020-08-12T15:42:12","slug":"bujin-poetry-between-brazil-and-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/bujin-poetry-between-brazil-and-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"B\u016aJIN, poetry between Brazil and South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">On her new single &#8220;SERGIO&#8221;, the Kenyan-South African B\u016aJIN draws a vivid satire of modern colonialism. She explains the metaphor in a nearly philosophical interview.&nbsp;<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>A versatile artist, Dani Kyengo takes advantage of her Kenyan and South African roots to work on music in all its forms and develop an avant-garde soul that she has been producing since the beginning of the year. After the mystical &#8220;Rosalinine&#8221; and the more energetic &#8220;Weird Venom&#8221; which oscillates between gqom and dancehall, she invites trumpet player Keegan Steenkamp on her third single &#8220;SERGIO&#8221;, a jazzy downtempo track with a haunting and introspective groove. Rather than praising Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town through their beaches and cocktails, she breaks the exotic dream of the average tourist to transform it into a dark poetry, deviating the ideal of the character of S\u00e9rgio Mendes towards a sinister allegory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div><div><iframe style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/track=828896985\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/tracklist=false\/artwork=small\/transparent=true\/\" seamless loading=\"lazy\"><a href=\"http:\/\/bujin.bandcamp.com\/track\/sergio\">SERGIO by B\u016aJIN feat. Keegan Steenkamp<\/a><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>You wrote Sergio in one day without imagining the final message.\nWhat was the initial intention ?<\/strong>&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The initial intention was to exorcise a feeling more than show up with lyrical intent.&nbsp; I tend to write from imagery, memories, sketches of sound because there\u2019s a porousness to my imagination and how I think through sound\u2026&nbsp; What it holds, what slips out, lets in and multiplies in between its motions. It leaves room for anything to become something and something to become a dialogue, or less of a single story.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How was the working process with Keegan Steenkamp on this song ? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We flowed really great. He\u2019s a good friend, an incredible and\nthoughtful musician and someone I\u2019ve hung out and collaborated with before. We\nworked on a long form sound\/performance installation last year that I devised\nfor the art festival Infecting The City and a sound installation I took to\nBerlin.&nbsp; When he was over one day at my\nplace, I played him the song. The next time, I showed him the trumpet motif I\nthought of as an intro. Instead of recording an intro we recorded and improvised\nfor the whole track.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>In this song, are you talking about S\u00e9rgio Mendes ? If so, could you\ndevelop the metaphor ? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moments in conversations hold onto my imagination quite vividly until I\nexorcise them &#8211; sometimes literally. S\u00e9rgio became that metaphor that occupied\na lot of my mental space after a conversation I had with a friend who&#8217;s another\nradical artist and thinker, long before I wrote the song. We spoke about\npractices of resistance and colonial hauntings of space and land, Cape Town in\nparticular. Its many semblances to Rio de Janeiro came up. \u201c&#8230;Except, we have\na Signal Hill and no Jesus\u201d, I recall what was echoed in the conversation.&nbsp; So when I wrote the song I tended to this\nimage, carefully, in my mind. I laughed at it a couple times too. The image of\na passively watching Christ the Redeemer \u2013 the \u201call-seeing\u201d, but not the\nall-saving.&nbsp; Those feelings of saudade,\ndesire, disillusionment, and betrayal that comes up when you realise that\nperhaps even our emblems of faith or \u201cour\u201d spiritualities have been penetrated\nby a ubiquitous colonial myth that something, someone, maybe is coming to save\nyou and us\u2026 ?&nbsp; Or that black folks \u201cneeded\nsaving\u201d from ourselves to begin with ? Then I think about how, just as casually\nas S\u00e9rgio Mendes plays that unmistakable piano intro to \u201cMas Que Nada\u201d, we\ndance. That version is etched into imaginations all over the world. Even though\nJorge Ben wrote the original.&nbsp; That\nChrist image together with the rolling percussive piano intro to Mendes\u2019 \u200b\u201cMas\nQue Nada\u201d, \u200b playing over and over and over, taking over my mental space until\nit turned to something sinister, this is what came to mind. It\u2019s quite dark.\nFor me this is the S\u00e9rgio metaphor.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div><div><iframe style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/track=3994548210\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/tracklist=false\/artwork=small\/transparent=true\/\" seamless loading=\"lazy\"><a href=\"http:\/\/bujin.bandcamp.com\/track\/rosaniline\">ROSANILINE by B\u016aJIN<\/a><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>You are talking about the common colonialist oppression towards\nSouth African and black brazilian people. Why do you talk about them in\nparticular, and why telling the story through the city of Rio de Janeiro ? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a musician, artist, a storyteller who works with sound, my role is\nto imagine. I can imagine by way of sharing with others, the role that critical\nimagining has in collective resistance for black people with complicated\nhistories, identities, socialities and hauntings.&nbsp; I like imagining. For me it&#8217;s one of the most\nliberating muscles to exercise through music, when for so long I or someone\nlike me, perhaps hasn\u2019t been allowed to \u200bjust \u200bimagine, right ?&nbsp; Whether I\u2019m talking about Rio de Janeiro or\nCape Town, metaphors, symbols and processes of imagination is a part of that\nstorytelling, and it extends into a practice with sound, composition and\nintentionality, land and time.&nbsp; It\u2019s\nsomewhat a way of connecting dots by way of storytelling. Making sense of roots\nand networks of blackness, or displacement, or joy and resistance. Whether\nthat\u2019s Rio or Cape Town or Guyana. It\u2019s about people who\u2019ve collectively\nexperienced certain colonial audacities on our land, and continue to experience\nits many contemporary parasitic mutations.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>This single is very deep and introspective. Musically speaking, what\nkind of sound can we expect from your next releases ?&nbsp; <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I always say the same thing for this type of question&nbsp;: don\u2019t\nexpect anything&nbsp;!&nbsp; Don\u2019t expect a\nnext. I think it\u2019s something we need to become more attuned to and\naccommodating of as cultural consumers and producers ; that the artist reserves\nthe right to be like, \u200b\u201cthat\u2019s it, I\u2019m done. I\u2019d like to work on this part of\nmyself now. \u201d&nbsp; I\u2019ve been working on a\nsolo project and several collaborative ones, but what I\u2019m really looking\nforward to is finishing a short film score and performance installation I\u2019m in\nthe midst of developing. But everything is impermanent right now, I\u2019m just\nleaning into that feeling with as much grace as I can.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Le single est disponible depuis le 7 ao\u00fbt sur la page <a href=\"https:\/\/bujin.bandcamp.com\/track\/sergio\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"Bandcamp (s\u2019ouvre dans un nouvel onglet)\">Bandcamp<\/a> de l\u2019artiste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:30px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1010\" height=\"1010\" src=\"https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/be70cafd-a3288843147_10-1010x1010.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-57035\" srcset=\"https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/be70cafd-a3288843147_10-1010x1010.jpg 1010w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/be70cafd-a3288843147_10-759x759.jpg 759w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/be70cafd-a3288843147_10-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/be70cafd-a3288843147_10-661x661.jpg 661w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/be70cafd-a3288843147_10-465x465.jpg 465w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/be70cafd-a3288843147_10-375x375.jpg 375w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/be70cafd-a3288843147_10-200x200.jpg 200w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/be70cafd-a3288843147_10-85x85.jpg 85w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/be70cafd-a3288843147_10-73x73.jpg 73w, https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/be70cafd-a3288843147_10.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(min-width:1010px) 759px,100vw\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On her new single &#8220;SERGIO&#8221;, the Kenyan-South African B\u016aJIN draws a vivid satire of modern colonialism. She explains the metaphor in a nearly philosophical interview.&nbsp; A versatile artist, Dani Kyengo takes advantage of her Kenyan [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":57034,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7835],"tags":[],"location":[8092,7844],"yst_prominent_words":[20130,11425,11368,20127,20124,8414,20025,8435,20129,20022,20034,20131,9006,20125,9202,8543,20165,13337,20132,20128],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57096"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57096"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=57096"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=57096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}