Digital Oral History from Durban

DURBAN SINGS is a regional audio media and oral history project with a story, an open platform for contributions and re-mixes from other listeners, and a trajectory of joining hemispheres via audio correspondence between listeners: building on a listening bridge between ‘grass-roots’ organisation of community, artists and activist groups of the Southern and Northern hemispheres. “Its oral history aspect is about reclaiming the re-membering of our condition. (us = Azanians) and sharing this with global audience: the attempt in advancing an African theory of history.” (Motho) Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph Haile Selassie (His Imperial Majesty, 1892) We tend to privilege experience itself, as if black life is lived experience outside of representation. . . . Instead, it is only through the way in which we represent and imagine ourselves that we come to know how we are constituted and who we are.” Stuart Hall. (“What Is This ‘Black’” 30) In the telling and retelling of their stories/ They create communities of memory/ History, despite it’s wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, and if faced /With courage, need not be lived again. (Maya Angelou)