#02
Simon Njami,
Sammy Baloji
& Mo Laudi
06 07 2021
Simon Njami is an independent lecturer, art critic, novelist and essayist. He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the cultural magazine "Revue Noire". His publications include four novels, two biographies (James Baldwin, 1991 and Senghor, 2007) and numerous essays for biennales and exhibitions catalogues. Njami has been artistic directors of the Bamako photography biennale (2000 to 2010), Dakar Biennale (2026, 2018), Kampala Biennale (2018, 2020), Lubumbashi Biennale (2000) and the Luanda and Douala triennials. He was co-curator with Fernando Alvim of the first African pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. He has curated numerous exhibitions, including Africa Remix (touring exhibition 2004, 2007), A collective Diary (Tel Aviv, 2010), a Useful dream (Brussels, 2010) and the first African Art Fair held in Johannesburg in 2008. The Divine Comedy, opened at MMK in March 2014 and at SCAD (Savannah), 2014, African Metropolis(Maxxi 2018) and I is another Galleria Nazionale, Rome (2018). He is the art advisor of the project “At Work” a touring project by Moleskine and created the African masterclasses in photography in 2009. He edited Just Ask, a lexicon on photography (2012) and the Journey (2020).
Sammy Baloji was born and raised in Lubumbashi, in the mineral-rich Katanga province of Democratic Republic of Congo where he was sensitized to the colonial history and the postcolonial decline of the once-prosperous mining region of DRC, which Chinese and western companies exploit today. Baloji juxtaposes photographic realities, combining past and present, the real and the ideal, to illicit glaring cultural and historical tensions. He explores architecture and the human body as traces of social history, sites of memory, and witnesses to operations of power. Baloji has exhibited widely, with solo exhibitions at: Lund Konsthall and Aarhus Kunsthal (2020), Le Point du Jour, Cherbourg (2019), Framer Framed, Amsterdam (2018), Museumcultuur Strombeek (2018), The Power Plant, Toronto, Open Society Foundation, New York, and WIELS, Brussels (2016-2017). Musée du quai Branly, Paris; MuZee, Oostende, Belgium; Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren; and Museum for African Art, NY. He has participated in several major international biennales including; Sydney Biennial (2020), Documenta 14 (Kassel/Athens, 2017), Lyon Biennial (2015), Venice Biennial (2015). A Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres, Baloji is recipient of several prestigious residencies and awards.
Mo Laudi is a multidisciplinary artist, composer, DJ and producer renowned for his key contributions to Afro-electronic music in London during the first decade of the millennium and, since then, in Paris. He creates sonic landscapes, mixing vocals, textures and rhythms as a socio-political critique of society. Investigating forms and materials, through painting, collage, sculpture, installation and video, he focuses on deconstructing black futurity, African knowledge systems and spirituality, to form new pathways of understanding multiplicities of cultures. He draws on his experience in the music sphere to develop multi-layered sound installations for exhibitions and festivals such as Ernest Mancoba. I Shall Dance in a Different Society, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2019), OORtreders, Belgium (2020), Casablanca Biennale, Morocco (2022). In 2021, he exhibits collaboratively with Charlotte Moth in Décalage, art3, Valence and with Becky Beh in La Clairière d’Eza Boto, Jardin des plantes, Rouen; he curates Salon Globalisto, Galerie Bonne espérance, Paris and opens his first solo show at Apartment, Cape Town.
Sammy Baloji was born and raised in Lubumbashi, in the mineral-rich Katanga province of Democratic Republic of Congo where he was sensitized to the colonial history and the postcolonial decline of the once-prosperous mining region of DRC, which Chinese and western companies exploit today. Baloji juxtaposes photographic realities, combining past and present, the real and the ideal, to illicit glaring cultural and historical tensions. He explores architecture and the human body as traces of social history, sites of memory, and witnesses to operations of power. Baloji has exhibited widely, with solo exhibitions at: Lund Konsthall and Aarhus Kunsthal (2020), Le Point du Jour, Cherbourg (2019), Framer Framed, Amsterdam (2018), Museumcultuur Strombeek (2018), The Power Plant, Toronto, Open Society Foundation, New York, and WIELS, Brussels (2016-2017). Musée du quai Branly, Paris; MuZee, Oostende, Belgium; Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren; and Museum for African Art, NY. He has participated in several major international biennales including; Sydney Biennial (2020), Documenta 14 (Kassel/Athens, 2017), Lyon Biennial (2015), Venice Biennial (2015). A Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres, Baloji is recipient of several prestigious residencies and awards.
Mo Laudi is a multidisciplinary artist, composer, DJ and producer renowned for his key contributions to Afro-electronic music in London during the first decade of the millennium and, since then, in Paris. He creates sonic landscapes, mixing vocals, textures and rhythms as a socio-political critique of society. Investigating forms and materials, through painting, collage, sculpture, installation and video, he focuses on deconstructing black futurity, African knowledge systems and spirituality, to form new pathways of understanding multiplicities of cultures. He draws on his experience in the music sphere to develop multi-layered sound installations for exhibitions and festivals such as Ernest Mancoba. I Shall Dance in a Different Society, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2019), OORtreders, Belgium (2020), Casablanca Biennale, Morocco (2022). In 2021, he exhibits collaboratively with Charlotte Moth in Décalage, art3, Valence and with Becky Beh in La Clairière d’Eza Boto, Jardin des plantes, Rouen; he curates Salon Globalisto, Galerie Bonne espérance, Paris and opens his first solo show at Apartment, Cape Town.
#02
Simon Njami,
Sammy Baloji
& Mo Laudi
in conversation podcast 48’ 58”
Johari - Brass Band, sculptures by Baloji, form a unifying thread between the trio, with a corresponding text by Njami and sound composition by Mo Laudi. Together they discuss the interrelation between history, memory and music resonating across South Africa, DRC, Cameroon, France and the United States. The conversation examines how ways of living, remembering and writing are interwoven on the continent and asks -- Should we reinvent or question the semantics and the way history is written? How can we reinvent languages, find other rhythms, and the instruments for reappropriating, reinterpreting and rewriting history?
#02
Congo Square
in D# minor
Mo Laudi
sonic composition 9’ 38”
Invited by Sammy Baloji to delve into the historic preparatory research for Johari - Brass Band and hours of music archives, Mo Laudi has connected this to his own archive to construct a soundscape that form parallels between Congo and South Africa via New Orleans and France, questioning the shared Pan-African experience of appropriation, of exploitation of natural resources and Black bodies.
Legend has it that, once a week on Sundays, the slaves in New Orleans were “allowed” to congregate and dance in Congo Square. When the occupying French military hurriedly headed for Haiti in the late 18th century, they left behind their brass instruments which were instantly taken up by the local communities who went on to develop innovative and now world-renowned music styles. Complex syncopated drum patterns, lung-based rhythmics, grooves and claps became ingrediency that formulated Jazz.
Mo Laudi recalls that his first experiences of brass bands in South Africa were the local ‘Ga Molepo Church’ as well as the ZCC, Zion Christian Church, “they performed with gusto and had such a groove about them.” His sonic composition references the hybrid spirituality that merged religious celebrations and African traditions such as dinaka/kiba (the traditional music of the Sotho people), the Hip Hop and RnB samplings of the HBCU (Historical Black Colleges and Universities) brass bands as recently highlighted by cultural purveyors such as Beyoncé at her Coachella Homecoming performance.
Congo Square in D# Minor merges multi-layered influences: how slaves reappropriated Western wind instruments (the metal of which had often been extracted from African mines), trumpets, tubas, trombones, French horns appear, mixed like a Gumbo dish, with African roots, Black and Creole roots of Jazz inspired by Congo Square, samples from a jazz funeral, a New Orleans tradition of burying the dead by having a ‘second line’ street procession, found recordings of the Congo river, funeral processions in South Africa, scarification ceremonies in Congo, the horns blowing in a call-and-response unison creating a trance atmosphere capturing collective spirituality. It also includes extracts from a lecture by Dr. Howard Nicholas on the role of economics, the interrelation between underdevelopment, exploitation and extraction in Africa, including mineral resources such as copper.
Mo Laudi’s proposed playlist of 100 tracks attempts a fusion of the plethoric history and currency of brass bands worldwide and the interconnected influence of marching bands, African and European music and performance on popular culture.
Legend has it that, once a week on Sundays, the slaves in New Orleans were “allowed” to congregate and dance in Congo Square. When the occupying French military hurriedly headed for Haiti in the late 18th century, they left behind their brass instruments which were instantly taken up by the local communities who went on to develop innovative and now world-renowned music styles. Complex syncopated drum patterns, lung-based rhythmics, grooves and claps became ingrediency that formulated Jazz.
Mo Laudi recalls that his first experiences of brass bands in South Africa were the local ‘Ga Molepo Church’ as well as the ZCC, Zion Christian Church, “they performed with gusto and had such a groove about them.” His sonic composition references the hybrid spirituality that merged religious celebrations and African traditions such as dinaka/kiba (the traditional music of the Sotho people), the Hip Hop and RnB samplings of the HBCU (Historical Black Colleges and Universities) brass bands as recently highlighted by cultural purveyors such as Beyoncé at her Coachella Homecoming performance.
Congo Square in D# Minor merges multi-layered influences: how slaves reappropriated Western wind instruments (the metal of which had often been extracted from African mines), trumpets, tubas, trombones, French horns appear, mixed like a Gumbo dish, with African roots, Black and Creole roots of Jazz inspired by Congo Square, samples from a jazz funeral, a New Orleans tradition of burying the dead by having a ‘second line’ street procession, found recordings of the Congo river, funeral processions in South Africa, scarification ceremonies in Congo, the horns blowing in a call-and-response unison creating a trance atmosphere capturing collective spirituality. It also includes extracts from a lecture by Dr. Howard Nicholas on the role of economics, the interrelation between underdevelopment, exploitation and extraction in Africa, including mineral resources such as copper.
Mo Laudi’s proposed playlist of 100 tracks attempts a fusion of the plethoric history and currency of brass bands worldwide and the interconnected influence of marching bands, African and European music and performance on popular culture.