New Feature: AIDS Protest Singing In South Africa
The South African protest culture during Apartheid had an important influence on the global movement to gain access to HIV/AIDS drugs in the 1990s and 2000s. Activists on the front-line of the AIDS struggle used many of the same tactics - especially singing.
A new feature piece from Durban, South Africa explorers this link. I wrote it while at the 2016 International AIDS Conference in Durban.
Read the piece here!
The unique Afrikaans-language Cape Malay choirs and their banjo and mandolin pickers
Exploring the tantalizing links between fife and drum styles in Mississippi and in Congo
AIDS activists sing on the streets of Durban during the 2016 AIDS Conference in South Africa
The urban cowboy fiddlers of Latin America
Multi-party harmony singing from a HIV group in Southern Malawi
A night playing Klezmer tunes with members of the Professional Musicians Union in Khartoum, Sudan.
The fishermen in Lake Kivu in between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo are famed for their songs as they paddle out for a night of fishing.
Balkan-sounding Mexican Tambora Oaxaqueña in Santa Monica for a religious festival
Classic “finger style” banjo is kept alive by some hard-core devotees. A night with two ragtime giants in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
A journey into the Montes de María mountain range to hear the other-worldly sounds of the Gaita