Unyazi 2005: Electronic Music Symposium and Festival

NewMusicSA is pleased to present the Unyazi Electronic Music Symposium and Festival 2005, Africa's first electronic music festival and conference. The ground-breaking four-day event aims to promote a dialogue concerning electroacoustic music in the southern hemisphere, between composers, performers, and musicologists from South Africa and the rest of the world. Unyazi 2005 will commence with a conference between overseas and local composers, performers and musicologists; the proceedings of which will be published with the assistance of IPEM (Belgium). The festival aims to measure the need of, and create an awareness of: the significant, economic, and practical role the computer does and can play in music creation, performance, and education. South African musicians will have the opportunity to work with their international counterparts during workshops concerning the practical application of electronics in music. It is time to celebrate electronic music in Africa, and South Africa can play a leading role in doing so. South African society has a rich, multicultural heritage, and we can therefore strive to create electronic music that is uniquely African.

Electronic music categories featured in performances include:

• Electroacoustic performance — some of which will employ instruments built from junk, hardware, and found objects, and used both as compositional and improvisational tools
• Laptop and computer music
• Sound installations
• Computer-automation of acoustic instruments
• Microcomputers in live performance, including: "home-made" electronic circuitry, radio, found sound material, and transformed musical instruments
• Sound poetry
• Interactive audio-visual work in live performance
• DJ'ing / VJ'ing

Electronic music and some of it's main categories described in Wikipedia:

• Electronic music
• Electroacoustic music
• Musique concrète
• Electronic art music
• Noise music
• Computer music
• Sound installation

The history of electronic music is described in Obsolete's 120 Years Of Electronic Music