Namibia’s rich music history retrieved

Stolen Moments, Namibian Music History Untold is a research group that investigates the history of Namibian popular music. The team says the goal is to celebrate and bring back-to-life the golden age of Namibian popular music from the 1950s up to 1990. In those days due to the political system, and the social inequalities the local music and their performers didn’t have a strong lobby, they rarely got recorded and there were almost no record deals and music distributors. From today’s perspective people tend to believe that there never was anything like proper popular Namibian music but only religious, traditional, Western classical and imported South African music, which is totally wrong. “ We think it is time to change this misconception for the sake of the next generations to come,” the team said. Responding to questions about what they have done so far, the team said originally the aim was to rescue and preserve what otherwise might be lost and forgotten forever. “With the help of the media we ran a six month campaign in Namibia’s most popular newspapers that helped us to address themes, subject sand questions to the general public on a weekly basis and then see what came up. I felt like going fishing – we had no idea of what would happen,” they said. The research team is looking for old pictures, memories and recordings that can prove how rich and vivid the local musical life was back then. They revealed that so far, the response has been massive. and that since the start of their research announcements in the media, people from all over the country called them up, sent text messages, emailed or contacted them via Facebook. “It was overwhelming. We were not prepared for such an epic response,” they said. Eventually, the researchers identified around 100 individuals that they wanted to conduct extensive audio interviews with, and in August 2012 they set out on a six-week field trip travelling north to south and east to west to meet up with all these people. They explained that the people they met came from all walks of life. At the end of the trip, they were sitting with over 120 hours of audio interviews in five different languages, plenty of photographs that came as contributions from the interviewees, private collections or archives that they researched, some film footage and plenty of music recordings of various origins. Among this wealth of information, were photos slumbering in the National Archives and other collections, but the images lacked detailed descriptions. “Many times it was not clear what we saw on those pictures. So we also used the campaign to clarify, in some instances, who is who and where is where. Otherwise in a hundred years from now, nobody would be able to read and understand all those pictures and recordings, only because we forgot to care about our cultural heritage,” they said. Speaking on the next step, the researchers said that after looking at all the material lying in front of them, they thought, it should just be handed over to the National Archives for safeguarding. But, they decided that they wanted the world to see the beauty and richness of Namibian popular music and decided that all the untold stories needed to be heard. They then came up with the idea of an exhibition once they heard of the UNESCO’s intangible heritage fund and the German Bundeskulturstiftung fund to whom they decided to introduce their work and aims. Bundeskulturstiftung financed a fact-finding mission for two of the members to go to Europe to explore the story-telling potential of the material which resulted in a very intense five-week trip and meetings with curators, publishers, artists, scientists, photographers, programmers, writers, musicians, inventors, architects and graphic designers, etc. “It was a revelation. It finally made us understand the power and the potential that lies in the material. If we could only share a little bit of this with the general public in Namibia and maybe even outside, it could have positive effects – be it for information, education, entertainment, safeguarding or promotion.” The fact-finding mission ended in November 2013. Throughout the last year the research group developed an exhibition concept, which has been accepted and will be funded by the Bundeskulturstiftung to exhibit in Europe. The group says it will be a pity if they cannot exhibit in Namibia and are therefore in search for funding for this. Anyone who wants to support the promotion of Namibian popular music is encouraged to support the researchers. Besides for the exhibition, the researchers managed to secure funding from the German Foreign Ministry, through the German Embassy in Namibia to start a digitalisation initiative in cooperation with the NBC and Stolen Moments to safeguard endangered Namibian popular music. This initiative started in January 2015 with the donation of an analogue to digital recording studio for data transfer which will continue at least up to the end of this year. The group will soon reveal news concerning their new campaign. They do however, still need help from the public. The group is searching for the biographical data and information of what happened to some of these early musicians. These individuals includes the Weekend Band, Sam Jahrs, Lyden Naftali, Warmgat (Johannes Mureko), Rita Ikwambi, Leslie Kozonguizi, Archie v. d. Ploeg, Wiks Louw, Willy Collins, Rocking Kwela Boys / Outjo Sisters, Swartbooi Orkestra, Peter Josef !Auxab, Storbek Group, Stoney Mubiane Those with information can contact the team on 081-4004412 or email them at [email protected] .