The image of the ship conjures up entire political, economic and spiritual histories — conquest, empire, struggle, song, kneeling, kneeling in protest, kneeling in prayer, the knee that forces one to shout, “I can’t breathe.”  From the first slave ship that transported enslaved mothers, children and fathers across the Atlantic to the raft that fails to protect the migrant crossing the sea, water is an undercurrent to all struggles. These struggles are connected and everything is everything.

Within the narrative of colonialism, there exist many lives that are rendered invisible and, furthermore, lives that are unheard — or rather, lives whose reverberations and echoes are felt only by those paying attention. Writer Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts speaks of rumours of a universal hum, an imperceptible vibration producing a sound 10 000 times lower than can be registered by the human ear. Perhaps this barely noted hum is the echo of enslaved peoples; their cries of sorrow and of joy through song.

Reminiscent of the Negro spirituals of the South, the song Amazing Grace has long been a beloved companion, offering encouragement in times of grief and disappointment — a bona fide anthem for the scarred, the broken, the unjustly treated and the hopeful. 

But of course, its past is fraught. It is marred, sullied and implicated in the ugly history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The hymn dates back to 1779, when it was written by poet and clergyman John Newton; 1779 ― the same year Spain declared war on Great Britain (the longest siege endured by British Armed Forces) in support of the American Revolutionary War, which sought to overthrow British rule across North America. 

Tough to believe that a song of comfort and consolation was itself conceived by a slaver in the slave trade. But then again, if ever there was a song for  absolution and salvation it would be this one: “I once was lost, but now am found/ Was blind, but now I see.”

Making Grace Amazing, which takes the form of a call-and-response between composer Neo Muyanga, soprano Tina Mene and multidisciplinary troupe Legítima Defesa, functions as an unflinching inquiry into America’s most beloved hymn. It studies the evolution and persistence of this 240-year-old hymn as not only a mark of time but also as a contestation of history and temporality. Through moving images, fragments of writings and a sound archive, Muyanga reconsiders its dark and obscured past, detailing these histories, while reimagining the hymn through a subversive, layered and non-linear lens.

You can watch the performance online; tickets cost R35.

This article was first published on The Critter.

There’s good reason it’s called heartbreak.

Your chest is cracked open: the person digs their way into the depths of you, gouges a souvenir chunk of your heart and skips away, leaving a monstrous, festering cavity.

And that’s when it’s not messy.

Which elixirs we choose to doctor the debilitating emptiness, and how we revive ourselves to our former state of healthy wholeness, provides self-insight like nothing else. Here, truly, the phrase “each to their own” applies. You just do whatcha gotta do to get through.

Swan Song’s protagonist (Buhle Ngaba) is, apparently, also just doing her thing. We’re brought into a young woman’s story of experiencing a breakup. When we first encounter the jaded eyes and her sardonic, raw recitations on life, too weary to wipe the spilled Heinz soup off her chin, the instinct is to tuck her under our wings and nurture her.

But she’s defiant, too — determined to pick at the scars until the truth seeps out. Flitting between memories, she (and we) piece together the fragments that have made this woman who she is. The older the memory, the thicker the scar, the tougher the excavation.

Communal bath time. Exposure and humiliation in front of judging eyes. Why are you different, hey? Church time. The Bible’s lessons. Sin, sin, sin. Shame, shame, shame. Love and acceptance aren’t human rights, they’re earned in exchange for obedience and blind trust. TV time. Fake drivel packaged as reality and sold as a dream. TV: capitalism’s machine gun. If you’re not “striving for success”, what are you doing with your life?

When she turns the mirror towards us, bright light illuminating the space between us — are we proud or nervous of what could be exposed?

Remember, the personal is political and the political is personal; metaphor is stitched into the fabric of Swan Song.

Black mother, white father with “his jungle fever”, created this being. Born with winged scapula. Come puberty, O happy days: all that “body business” becomes a mush and slush of finding your identity.

From multifarious angles, she’s taught to be ashamed of her biology, her body; that which is her physical presence. Through all the crap she manages to build confidence. Claiming space is important. Belonging is important. Yet there are those who don’t accept other bodies when they’re unlike their own. Who see difference as something to be corrected and an opportunity to brandish their intervention-whip under the guise of care and concern. Enter boyfriend Oliver to help her “fix” herself. But what are the costs?

Her body is “fixed”. Her wings are clipped. Now straightened; now back in line.

The metaphors are subtle. Because our concern is focused on the fragile soul in front of us ― smearing her lipstick again, swatting away the ever-present buzz of the flies, baring her inner world moment to moment ― we’re only hit once it’s all over.

It was not her body that was deformed. It was those made uncomfortable by The Other, whose skewed views need untwisting.

A deeper read: so many white knights playing rescuer. So many “if it weren’t for XYZ, so and so would never have made it out of the township” narratives. Against all odds! But the wings have already been torn from the fly, so must it just slowly die? Wild ideal: imagine if we changed the odds, deconstructed the system just a little so people could stop being bent to breaking point.

We’ve reached the brink. She is unhinged but still loosely wearing her pointe shoes; yet another cage created for the purpose of reshaping what’s natural. She grips at the vestiges of what she was before the world got hold of her. Like Swan Lake, there’s tragedy here. Like Black Swan, there’s a dark exposure of the destruction and folly and risk in striving for a perfection, an ideal, that cannot exist.

Although Swan Song was previously staged as a live performance, at the virtual National Arts Festival, we’re not watching a recording. The artists have reformulated the work for film. Combining an awesomely unsettling soundscape and soundtrack with unnerving filming tactics (coming in and out of focus, uncomfortably in-your-face close ups) with a super-slick cut and edit, they’ve created an edgy production. The gripping filming style reflects Ngaba’s brutally vulnerable performance. It makes for a winning work.

You can watch the film here; tickets cost R35. 

This article was originally published in The Critter.