On the evenings of 22 and 23 November 2024, Sun Xa Experience offered a cosmic relief to the concrete articulation of the past, presents and futures of the Drill Hall. In the context of Skaftien #6: 13+ km around the Drill Hall Arts Advocacy Project, a project that manifested at the House of World Cultures/HKW, Berlin, Sun Xa spent 6+ months prior working on this mythical com-mission. While the camera will never come close to the visceral power of those two offerings, we are proud to present the beautiful attempt by Ibra Wane and the team.

The cultural collective, Sun Xa Experiment, was founded in 2014 to build momentum around the exploration of kinetic and sonic spiritual transcendence through the use of sound. In essence, Sun-Xa has built a folk ambiance with the aim of sustaining cultural heritage through their often ecstatic, somatic-psychotherapeutic performances. Their songs come across as extended jams, which evoke spiritual connections that are informed by visions and invocations. With this performance, Sun Xa celebrates the release of their second, self-titled studio album, marking ten years of existence. With the expert and institutional-historical leadership of Lebohang More, members of Sun Xa Experiment are:

Buyisiwe Aangeline Njoko – Lead Vocals [Vuvuzela, Shakers, Whistles, Shakara & Gong]

Karolo More – Choreographer & Back Up Vocals [JagerFlute & Percussion toys]

Lerato Terrance Seitei – Lead Guitar [Cajon drum, small Djembe & Back up Vocals]

Tebogo Leslei Mkhize – Bass Guitar [Didgeridoo Pipe, Acoustic Guitar & Back up Vocals]

Ambrosio Benedict Watte – Percussionist [Conga Drums, Djembe Drums, Percussion Toys]

Sun Xa Experiment – the name is a celestial meeting between Sun Ra and Ndikho Xaba – is a musical outfit that anchors its approach in afrofuturism. Their visceral and transcendental sound can best be understood as a musical journey from the heart of Soweto, and aims to resonate with innate spiritual codes of all human existence. Sun Xa Experiment leads a performance that has been conceived as a sonic chronicle of the trials, tribulations, and insurmountable triumphs of the Drill Hall, serving as a mirror of the restless land/people and their riotous movements across space and time. The narrative unfolded over a two-night concert at HKW’s Miriam Makeba Auditorium, both a summoning and a reckoning.

The title of the offering is borrowed from one of the songs in the two-night set – the notion of sorcery/witchcraft carries a plethora of meanings that challenges society to reframe them in terms that blasts open possibilities of placing colonialism as one of the many ways of thinking about trickery, consumption and annihilation on the one hand, as well as emancipation, healing and cleansing on the other, as central to reclamation of boloi/sorcery/witchcraft as (soft)power for the former and currently oppressed peoples of the world. The metaphysical collaborator on stage—coarse salt, symbolic of cleansing and fortification amongst many other functions—is a vital component of the performance, complicating the question of who exactly are Bana ba Baloyi, eintlek?

We are honoured to publish here the set list, with the grounding context of the unfolding narrative, written by Sun Xa experiment:

Bana ba Baloyi? (Sorcerer’s Children?): SIDE A, 22 November 2024

000 – Insert [Clan praises] paving the way into the cleansing ceremony to begin on stage [Clan praises by Karolo More] : 00:03:24 Min

001 : Authority : [the sound of authority] “Authority” is a sonic exploration of power both imposed and questioned,  it begins with the weight of enforced power, a kind of command that carries certain structures and the oppressive comfort of control.  There is no room for uncertainty here; the moves are calculated, the changes are deliberate and those who rule do so with confidence, sometimes blind sometimes cruel. 

But beneath that rigid order lies a resistance. The base trembles like the marching of men echoing heavy footsteps of those tasked to enforce, while also resonating the heavy hearts of communities who carry generational cries, ululations rising in protest, in sorrow, in remembrance.

The song holds a tension, a philosophical and spiritual questioning “Authority”? It’s not a statement. It’s a challenge. It’s a demand for accountability. The vocals rise like chants, invoking clarity, self-definition, and courage. Who are we? Where do we stand? The song does not merely ask, it insists we answer. 

Then comes a shift. A flute breaks the weighty silence, a piercing call after the stomp halts. It dances like a tumbleweed across a bearing desert uninvited, unexpected, and yet sacred. This flute isn’t just sound, it’s spirit. It demands silence, attention, and reception. It confronts each listener urging an inward gaze forcing reflection on how deeply we’ve been moved not by choice but by force. 

The dance movements become ritual painting, the journey of displacement, the spiritual scars left by those who pushed us to abandon our knowledge, literature and ideas, placing them in unreachable spaces. Through rhythm and breath the music asks: 

“Ubani Okunik’ Amandla?”

Who gave you power?

“Authority” is not just a song. It’s a confrontation and memory, a battle cry asking us to examine the structures that surround us and the strengths within us to resist, reclaim and remember.

 00:07:35 Min

002 – Who gave you authority (ubani okunike imvume) (Ubani Okunike Amandla?) Is a song of awakening a watchful reflection from above like the eyes of ancestors peering through the tops of ancient trees. From this high vantage point the song witnesses a quite yet unsettling invasion and unfamiliar power forces marching through indigenous lands treating this sacred earth and its spirits with disregard. 

The melody enters gently like birds calling to one another in the forest. The song is not just beautiful, it’s a warning, a form of ancestral communication alerting us of new arrivals who move with quiet disruption. These are not our people and yet they arrive cloaked in curiosity pretending to understand while secretly seeking ways to infiltrate, manipulate and extract. 

There is a sense of betrayal woven through the song, a surprise ambush by those who smile while dismantling, who speak peace while laying the groundwork for the erasure of traditions.  The song becomes a cry of protest, a voice raised not just in defense but in mourning for the creeping extinction of knowledge, culture and sacred ways of being. 

“Who gave you authority?” is both a question and a confrontation.  And ask the listener to notice what’s being taken, to remember what’s at stake and to reclaim the right to guard what is ours. Through layered harmonies, forest imagery and ancestral echoes the song stands as a fierce yet poetic resistance to the erasure of indigenous truth.  // 00:10:42 Min

003 – The Dawn Door Knock!! – it is during night when they attack, when they attack with decisions, with ideas that change our fate… >>> the part of awakening, what kind of awakening is that? It is a raw, uncanny way of introducing yourself during the dead hours of the morning.  In the silence of the morning night.  while in the land of slumber. You feel the stillness of the dawn, and the fear racing as the energy shifts to flight, fear, fight or flop.  The tension from the dream to the awake affects the physical.  The heart calms and races as it feels the danger coming to rudely unexpectedly abrupt and disrupt peace.  

Then the door breaks and screams of crying and fighting come to play with the power forces coming to take over and leave devastation.  it is during night when they attack, when they attack with decisions, with ideas that change our fate… >>> the part of awakening, what kind of awakening is that? It is a raw, uncanny way of introducing yourself during the dead hours of the morning.  00:02:36 min

004 – The Brutality Brings confusion, unresolving sounds (commosion) not knowing how to express. Using different sounds that are unorthodox.  ( The acoustic guitar accompanied by percussion sounds causing desolation sounds and poetry) // The cry from the pain, the anguish, how is it that a human thinks like this? 00:11:21 Min

005 – ISILILO (THE CRY) 

Dance expression and interpretation with (how we heal in africa, how we remedy ourselves is through song, dance, communism, a cry from a song, a cry to heal, a vocal wave accompanied

By Djembe drums [Sabungoma] we chant to identify the bad spirits, we also chant to remove the bad spirits. 00:11:11 Min

006 – Bana ba Baloyi ( from Umculo Umuthi): Children of the Witch: Bad spirits, casting them away ka Pina, ngeNgoma, our ritual, Umuculo umuthi, music is medicine, a ceremony that entails cleansing, through coarse salt, to rattle the energies and reshape them to good energies. 

00:11:04 Min  

Bana ba Baloyi? (Sorcerer’s Children?): SIDE B, 23 November 2024

00:00:00 – Insert [Clan praises] calling to our African ancestors to see us as we usher into the second day of cleansing!! [Emakhosini, Bogogo oMkhulu Siyavuma] we acknowledge [Clan praises by Karolo More] 00:57sec

001 – Sosebenza : The ceremony day, we are experiencing cleaning, we are stating our intention, who we are and why we are here, sun xa experiment is a medicinal blend of 

Cleansing energy with the energy directed into the importance of the job at hand. We work through words, meaning and direct messages, words are power, words that coinage new meaning of hope on a new day. The unism of the voices is a thunder that calms when it draws, it is the summorning, it is a call, to center ourselves into the right balance of energy. The rhythmic movements and sequencing that inkolo (Religion) ya kwa Shembe has for their African christian roots in their movement and command and calm at the same time. 00:08:58 Min

002 – The audacity (Sies!!) // its exclamation makes a louder emphasis on the disgust of the ill treatment and them coming from nowhere, they just come here to crush, destroy without permission or discussions. We can not just up and leave? Who said we won’t stand our ground? The audacity of misused power. Sies! 00:08:06 Min

003: Sizalwa Nge Gazi Lempi (Born of the Blood of War) we stand here as warriors bron from the bloodline of kings and queens who were brave enough to face up with any obstacle the world brings, through thriving and dedication we come ready to regain back what was taken from us, an intellectual war, a political war, a creative art war, it is surrounded by us wanting to take back what is ours and what is benefiting to the youth and community around it. 00:12:42 Min

004 : Cleansing (Ho Hlatswa ) Even in the darkest places, there is always light, we give love and through our gift of sound and gift of healing, we cleanse the space, we cleanse the energy, we cleanse the spirits that surround us, we pray, we meditate and we become one with ourselves in order from us to remember the reason why and who we are. This piece of performance uses coarse salt as this is an act and sound of cleaning….. 00:12:34 Min

(acoustic guitar)

004 : Samborera : with music we celebrate a lot as African children, we celebrate when a child is born, when an achievement is reached, we celebrate when we come from hunting, we celebrate before our warriors go to war, we also celebrate when we come victorious and Samborera is that calming song after the cleansing, we calm down the spirit, the energy, we rise with pure Energies as we move into a new dawn. 00:12:04 Min
005 : Buyisa Umhlaba : As we finish our ceremony we introduce a message that speaks directly to what we are here for, Buyisa uMhlaba (the foundation of Skaftien #6 13+ km around the Drill Hall Arts Advocacy Project) is the message that stands as the repatriation of the Drill Hall Building and it mirrors that in its message (Buyisa uMHLABA, Bring back the Land) it is a moment in time, the end of the struggle, the cleansing is fulfilled. 00:08:25 Min

Special thanks to the brilliant film crew:

Director – Ibra Wane

B Cam – Aimé Mvemba & Ingo Tillessen

Sound – Interview: Mariano Rosales

Edit & Color – Ibra Wane

This work was realised with funding from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, instigated by Keleketla Media Arts Project NPC, in partnership with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt/House of World Cultures/HKW.