I sing the body eclectic: rethinking opera for a more inclusive world

We are living in an age of loss: lost lives, lost opportunities, lost stories. We feel the Covid-19 net tightening around us in SA as we watch people in other countries getting back to “normal”. Reports of friends and acquaintances battling the effects of the coronavirus in bed or hospital fill our newsfeeds and waking thoughts. Some of us are lucky to be fearing for our families; others, less fortunate, are in mourning departed loved ones.

At such a time, the deaths of public figures (whether by Covid-19 or not) carry additional weight. We grieve for individuals whose names and faces we recognise, even if we didn’t know them personally. They stand in for the anonymous thousands whose deaths are condensed into infographics and official statistics.

In these circumstances, the deaths of elders, whose passing we might otherwise mark with solemnity, not with anguish, seem to cause a sharper pain, a more acute sense of sorrow. So it has been with Prof Mzilikazi Khumalo, who died recently at the age of 89.

A tribute published by Johannesburg’s Wits University, where Khumalo spent most of his career, notes that while “to the world Khumalo was a renowned musician”, to the Wits community “he was first and foremost an academic who contributed immensely to the development and academic standing of the study of African languages”.

Expanding the definition of opera is necessary to prevent the 'calcification' of what is understood as a traditional or canonical European art form and appreciate how its development should be placed within the context of older, non-European choral practices.

A recent webinar, “Opera, Commemoration and the Racialised Politics of Place”, took the form of a panel discussion connecting musical responses to significant historical events in the month of June in SA, the US and Britain.

Sipumzo Lucwaba spoke about his Imivumba YamaQhawe (The Scars of Our Heroes), a work written for and performed by school pupils in the Eastern Cape, recalling the Soweto uprising of June 16 1976 in light of the Marikana massacre and #FeesMustFall protests. US soprano Nicole Cabell, who curated a Juneteenth concert at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in Missouri, US, discussed the importance of June 19 1865, when slavery was finally abolished in Texas (the last of the confederate states to accept the Emancipation Proclamation). And British composer Shirley Thompson gave an overview of her operatic compositions, a presentation hinged around June 22 1948, when the Empire Windrush docked in Essex carrying passengers from the Caribbean: a landing that would subsequently become a crucial symbol of unresolved racism in the UK.

These historical resonances resulted in a discussion that shifted from some of the questions posed by researchers and practitioners in the BORN network — what does the “black” in “Black Opera” signify? How and why is this emphasis necessary? — to an inquiry into form: what do we mean by “opera”?

Expanding the definition of opera is necessary to prevent the “calcification” of what is understood as a traditional or canonical European art form and appreciate how its development should be placed within the context of older, non-European choral practices.

Lucwaba cited his experience of arranging the score for King Kong, which was conceived as a “jazz opera” by Todd Matshikiza in the 1950s, but had to be adjusted to “musical theatre” for Cape Town’s Fugard Theatre’s revival in 2017. He also noted how local musical traditions such as gwijo become a bridge to opera, while also evoking SA’s struggle history. These are the rousing sounds our country needs in its present, rather grim, moment.