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Ms Lusani Davhula (third from right) has teamed up with Prof Andrea Emberly (York University in Toronto, Canada) in a bid to repatriate Venda children's music back to South Africa. Picture supplied.

Activist teams up with Prof to further Tshivenda cultural knowledge

 

A Tshakhuma-born young lady, Lusani Davhula, has teamed up with Prof Andrea Emberly (York University in Toronto, Canada) in a bid to repatriate Venda children's music back into South Africa.

This became apparent when the two presented their collaborative work, entitled Competing to revive: Finding pathways for young Vhavenda musicians to access historical recordings on 9 November. The presentation took place at the 64th Annual International Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) Conference, which was held at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, USA.

“This presentation is a part of the repatriation of Venda children’s music through the Connecting Culture and Childhood Project,” Lusani said.

Prof Emberly has been working with Vhavenda communities for a long time and, together with Lusani, she realised that a gap existed between the muzika wa Vhavenda (traditional music) and how children and youths had access to learning all of the musical forms.

They have also been working with the archived documents, photos, films, and audio recordings of Venda music made by John Blacking in the 1950s that are housed at the University of Western Australia in Western Australia.

“We are working towards bringing these materials back to Venda, so that children and youths may learn from the history of their community about the music of Venda,” she said. She explained that her curiosity in delving deeper into knowing what lay beyond the culture was stimulated by the partnership with Prof Emberly. It encouraged and allowed her to write and prepare presentations in various countries, including Thailand, Canada and the USA. “This has not only given me the opportunity to travel but has also inspired other youths to pursue their dreams through getting education and applying their knowledge,” she said.

She has just travelled to Indiana University in the US, where she presented and represented Vhavenda culture in a documentary film of Venda music and culture, a project that she and Prof Emberly had started with young community members over the course of last year.

Lusani and Prof Emberly's new project is a documentary film, entitled Nayo dza vhalala. It is about Vhavenda culture and music and it provides commentary on how the young generation must carry their traditions into the future.

“Some of the aspects we discus in this film are cultural activities, such as different dances (tshifasi, domba and tshigombela), traditional food, and other aspects of Venda culture through interviews with community members and by connecting with the historical materials found in the Blacking collection,” she said.

Lusani also works with youths at Tshakhuma, where she leads and directs cultural films in which she also involves the local youths and offers them the opportunity to create and make a film that has been entirely produced by them.

“The youths have been voluntarily engaged in helping with recording the videos needed, conducting interviews as well as the foremost difficult step of producing a documentary film – editing,” she said.

The upcoming conference is scheduled for mid-November 2020 in Australia. “Our dream is to fly the team of young film-makers over to Australia, so they get an opportunity to share their culture with other young people from around the world,” she said. “We therefore would like to request for any kind of financial help from different communities, institutions, social and cultural agencies to help us get these young community members to Australia.”

Those interested in Lusani's projects can reach her on [email protected].

 

Ms Lusani Davhula was photographed giving a talk during one of the presentation slots at the Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, USA. Picture supplied.

 

Date:21 November 2019

By: Tshifhiwa Mukwevho

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho was born in 1984 in Madombidzha village, not far from Louis Trichardt in the Limpopo Province. After submitting articles for roughly a year for Limpopo Mirror's youth supplement, Makoya, he started writing for the main newspaper. He is a prolific writer who published his first book, titled A Traumatic Revenge in 2011. It focusses on life on the street and how to survive amidst poverty. His second book titled The Violent Gestures of Life was published in 2014.

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