Africa Open Improvising

Africa Open Improvising is a South African music collective that explores the capacities of free improvisational music to impact musicians, audiences, and sonic atmospheres of a university campus. Affiliated with Stellenbosch University’s Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation, the collective is known for its unique blend of free improvisational music that fosters collaboration among artists from diverse traditions and disciplines, driving innovation in both musical performance and interdisciplinary research.

Jan van Esch, pen on paper drawing of Africa Open Improvising in Pieter Okkers House, Stellenbosch, 2023

Africa Open Improvising emerged in March 2020, adapted its activities during the COVID-19 pandemic, and explored various interdisciplinary research and creative projects.

Ethos

The collective's emphasis on free improvisational music invites postures of listening and interplay that encourage music-making from diverse musical origins, on a diversity of music instruments, as played by self-taught artists, classical, jazz, and experimental musicians, among others. The group's ethos centers on inclusivity, welcoming anyone to join sessions, with a focus on sonic curiosity, listening, experimentation, and community-building. These aspects of sonic openness foster inter-relational energies focusing on collaborative and fluid musical exchanges. The collective maintains an open audience policy, allowing for walk-ins and interdisciplinary collaboration with visual artists, dancers, and researchers.

Jan van Esch, pen on paper drawing of Africa Open Improvising in Pieter Okkers House, Stellenbosch, 2023

History

Africa Open Improvising was initiated in March 2020 by improvisers Garth Erasmus (playing indigenous and self-made instruments like the ghorrah and mcinci and saxophone), Esther Marie Pauw (on flutes), and Pierre-Henri Wicomb (playing prepared piano). The collective's musicians have also included Jacques van Zyl (neural nets electronic noise music), John Pringle (percussion), Carina Venter (cello), Lize Briel (flutes), Cara Stacey (bows), Antoinette Theron (voice), Juliana Venter (voice), Likhona Tokota (tuba), Mo Laudi (synthesizer), and Peter Baxter (table-top percussion) and Melanie Hufkie (poetry) of the AMM All-Stars improvising collective (London), among others.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, the collective adapted to online and hybrid performance formats, allowing musicians to connect across national and international boundaries. This shift provided opportunities to engage with digital technologies as creative tools and as a research endeavor, resulting in the group's discovery of 'Zoom-curated music.' Musicians used Zoom as a meeting platform, acknowledging time lagging and audio channel preferences. They recorded fragments of Zoom-related sound and later collated the tracks, resulting in compositions created by Zoom as an external curator.

Dissemination of Music

The improvised recordings by the collective are disseminated through platforms like SoundCloud and the Internet Archive, attesting to the democracy and availability of their work. Their recordings are also available for further open-source editing, manipulation, and sampling, without copyright restrictions. Audio recordings and written reports are archived by the Africa Open Institute for Music, Research, and Innovation for future access and research.

Projects

The collective's activities include regular improvisation sessions and public performances at the Africa Open Institute and events organized by the Sonic Experimentation Network of South Africa (SENSA). After the pandemic, a public concert at Pieter Okkers House in Stellenbosch was documented in a published article with film and audio online.

In 2023, a collaboration with the London-based AMM-All Stars, facilitated by filmmaker Aryan Kaganof, led to a joint performance recorded as Slave Bell Quintet, which is available online. Xenochrony of shared tracks was radio-broadcast by Ben Watson (music writer) in London, underscoring the collective's openness to international collaboration.

In 2024, the collective engaged in a series of improvisations with a NAO-6 humanoid robot in a project initiated by the Goethe Institute, exploring cultural diversity in AI-humanoid interactions in African contexts.

Jan van Esch, pen on paper drawing of Africa Open Improvising in Pieter Okkers House, Stellenbosch, 2023

Interdisciplinary Group Work

The Africa Open Improvising collective fosters transdisciplinary research and creative outputs through music intersecting with disciplines such as physics, philosophy, ethnography, and mathematics. The collective's current work is enabled through technological innovations, such as improvising with humanoid robots, and through collaborations with visual artists and dancers.

Legacy and Influence

The collective’s focus on improvisational music and open-source sharing challenges the traditional music education model at Stellenbosch University, which historically focused on classical Western music. By emphasizing listening and creative exploration, Africa Open Improvising impacts research projects and encourages a transformative cultural atmosphere on campus. Their shared audio tracks and interdisciplinary projects demonstrate a commitment to innovation and inclusivity.