THE BOW PROJECT

NewMusicSA's BOW PROJECT continues to have an afterlife several years after it was conceived by Michael Blake for the New Music Indaba in 2002.

THE PROJECT

The project invites composers to transcribe one of Nofinishi Dywili's performances of a traditional uhadi bow song, arrange it for mezzo-soprano and string quartet, and compose a paraphrase or reimagining of the music for string quartet alone.

In concert the transcription is preceded by the original song performed by the legendary bow player and singer Madosini, and followed by the paraphrase.

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THE STORY SO FAR

• A pilot phase with pieces by Martin Scherzinger and Andile Khumalo launched the project at the New Music Indaba in Grahamstown in 2002 (see New Music Indaba 2002).
• The success of the first phase resulted in eight more commissions in 2003, six of which were completed and premièred at the New Music Indaba in Grahamstown and Johannesburg (see New Music Indaba 2003). Composers in this phase were Paul Hanmer, Philip Miller, Mokale Koapeng, Julia Raynham, Lloyd Prince and Matteo Fargion. The SABC recorded these for future broadcast...
• The complete collection was presented again at the 2004 New Music Indaba (see New Music Indaba 2004), and in 2005 a further four pieces were commissioned, including a work by Jürgen Bräuninger and Sazi Dlamini which combined the bow player and string quartet for the first time in this project. Robert Fokkens and Derek Gripper delivered the other two pieces. The 2005 performances were broadcast on BBC Radio 3's Hear and Now along with highlights from the 2005 Indaba (see New Music Indaba 2005).

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THE BOW PROJECT HAS DRAWN PRAISE FROM THE CRITICS

"If you needed a reason for having National Arts Festivals, then the Bow Project provided it." (Gwen Ansell, Cue)

"Most exciting, perhaps, is The Bow Project, a celebration of the uhadi bow music of the Eastern Cape...this is compelling repertoire...I have no doubt that several of these pieces will make it big in the US and Europe...pieces from The Bow Project are bound to become important." (Mary Rörich, Mail & Guardian)

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SPONSORSHIP

Sponsorship from the project's inception has come from the Distell Foundation for the Performing Arts, for which NewMusicSA is enormously grateful. Without visionary sponsors, such projects would not even get off the ground.

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2006

2006 has seen performances in Germany and the "Cradle of Mankind" in South Africa.

Mokale Koapeng's string quartet paraphrase Komeng — based on Uyeyezolo — toured Germany in May with performances in Ulm/Donau (14 May), Würzburg (15 May) and Dresden (16 May), played by the European Music Project of Berlin. The second concert was broadcast on German radio on 29 October.

Meanwhile back in South Africa a few days earlier, local diva Sibongile Khumalo made her Bow Project debut singing two of the transcriptions (with string quartet) of Nofinishi's songs: Matteo Fargion's Nguwe l'udal' inyakanyaka and Paul Hanmer's uTsiki. The companion string quartet paraphrases were also heard: Fargion's String Quartet No 4 and Hanmer's Ntwazana.

The performance took place in the Sterkfontein Caves — the Cradle of Mankind — near Johannesburg on 25 October.

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2008: BOW PROJECT GOES TO THE FAROE ISLANDS

NewMusicSA collaborated with the ISCM Section in the Faroe Islands, and Bow Project pieces by Mokale Koapeng and Julia Raynham were heard at Summartónar, the local contemporary music festival, in July 2008. For the first time also, composers from another country contributed bow pieces. Composers living and working in the Faroe Islands — Kristian Blak, his String Quartet No 5 and Atli Petersen, his Virtual Snowflakes (String Quartet No 2) — composed paraphrases on uhadi bow music.

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SOUTH AFRICAN TOUR AND CD RECORDING

For the 10th birthday of NewMusicSA, the Bow project will go on a national tour — with Madosini and a young ensemble from Denmark, the Nightingale String Quartet. The tour is sponsored by Distell and kicks off on 19 July at the Nederburg Estate in Stellenbosch. Thereafter the programme will visit five universities — Unisa, Wits, UKZN, UFS and Rhodes — and the performers and composers will present workshops in Soweto and in Lady Frere, the late Nofinishi Dywili's village in the Eastern Cape and the original source of the uhadi bow songs. At the end of the tour the performers will record the programme for CD release on the commercial label TUTL, based in the Faroe Islands. It should be available in South Africa by early in 2010.

See: The Bow Project Tour 2009

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Michael Blake presented a paper The Bow Project: Composers Reimagine the Bow Songs of Nofinishi Dywili at the Symposium on Ethnomusicology at ILAM, Grahamstown in 2004. It is published in the proceedings of that conference (ILAM, 2005). Copies available from ILAM.

A transcript of a round table discussion The Bow: South Africa's Weapon of Culture held at the 2003 New Music Indaba is published in NewMusicSA, Bulletin of the ISCM South African Section Third/Fourth Issue, 2004/5 & 2005/6 (NewMusicSA, 2006). The round table consisted of Michael Blake (chair), Matteo Fargion, Paul Hanmer, Philip Miller, and Julia Raynham. Copies are available from NewMusicSA: see NewMusicSA Bulletin No. 3-4 2004/2005 Contents for details.

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NOTE

NewMusicSA welcomes requests to present the project at arts festivals, arts centres and on concert series around the country. Contact: .

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