For this Sunday evening listening session, Tapiwa Svosve weaves sonic threads around jazz as a record of diaspora and migration, exploring the compositional impact of musicians and writers such as Mary Lou Williams, Julius Eastman, and Édouard Glissant on global soundscapes—from Baltimore clubs to the communes of 1970s Sweden. Svosve focuses on the state of improvisation and its potential to create and agitate energy in a multitude of contexts.

“The day of the new moon in the month of May is their great feast, which they call chuauo, at which all the lords in the kingdoms appear, excepting such as have title of kings, for these, although they are the vassals of Monomotapa, and pay him tribute, never come to his court, or leave their own kingdoms; but all the other lords, who are innumerable, are present at these feasts, and all pemberam, which means skirmish with assagais in their hands, attacking and menacing each other therewith, as though in warfare. The Monomotapa watches the skirmish from a seat, and in this manner, to the sound of drums and trumpets, they spend the whole day. The king withdraws at night, and no one sees him again for eight days, during which time the king’s drums are pounded day and night with a loud noise, for they are many and very large, after the fashion of kettledrums.”

This event is part of Whose World? Whose Future? Whose Hope? Critical Fabulation for Pluriversal Futures, a public research series that brings together contemporary thinkers and artists whose work promotes abolitionist, anti-racist, anti-fascist, and anti-imperialist visions for articulating and actualising alternative worlds and futures. The series is curated by Lilly Markaki and supported by the Humanities and Arts Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London.