DExZA-Festival Word’n’Music from April 13th-16th 2016 in Berlin
The festival of South African poems, rap lyrics and Hip-Hop music
April 18th, 2016
The „DExZA-Festival Word’n’Music” was held from April 13th-16th 2016 in Berlin and included readings and concerts with El Congo Allen (trumpet / percussion, Berlin), Amewu Hip Hop (Berlin), Yugen Blakrok Hip Hop (Johannesburg), Mara Genschel (author, Stuttgart), Vuyelwa Maluleke (Spoken Word, Johannesburg), Dalibor Markovic (Spoken Word, Frankfurt am Main), Thabiso “Afurakan” Mohare (Spoken Word / Hip Hop, Johannesburg), Lwazilubanzi Mthembu (singer-songwriter, Johannesburg), and Charl Pierre Naudé (author, Johannesburg). DExZA is a poetry, performance-poetry and hip hop style project created between Johannesburg and Berlin. In the literary-musical project, South African artists have to write texts with their German colleagues and translate them in the form of and melodies and composed sounds. On the DExZA Festival from April 13 to 16 2016 in Berlin, the results are then presented on the stage.
In workshops, the authors, writers and musicians meet and fathom their different individual starting points. They must transfer their texts, performance and content mutually in their language and respective art form. There was a cross-genre translation, both performing and creating new music, for example, South African poems translated into German rap lyrics and German spoken word verses transformed into South African poetry and hip hop. In the autumn of 2015 they have already delighted audiences with their performances in Johannesburg.
The “DExZA-Festival Word’n’Music” is a project of No Boundaries eV. and the Word N Sound Festival, sponsored by the Heinrich Boell Foundation, with financial support of the Foreign Office / German Embassy Pretoria, the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, the Goethe-Institut head office in Munich and the Berlin Artists Programme of the DAAD. The project is also supported by the Literature Workshop Berlin / House for Poetry and the South African Embassy in Berlin.
References:
Maurycy Barański, Berlin Global
