Grab whatever warm slice of life you can before it turns on you—Read an excerpt from Nthato Mokgata’s debut novel Ghost in the Drum
The JRB presents an excerpt from Ghost in the Drum, the debut novel by Nthato Mokgata aka Spoek Mathambo. Ghost…
Tag: Music
It’s been, as they say, one helluva year—A playlist compiled by Tymon Smith
It’s the holidays, so here in slight recognition, if not celebration, is the final Radio JRB offering of the year….
Spring has sprung / go full Howard Beale—A playlist compiled by Tymon Smith
Every day ‘we’ here at Radio JRB hope that the timing of the next mixtape will coincide with something topical…
On identity, poetry, diaspora and Afropessimism—Kweku Abimbola in conversation with Sreddy Yen
Gambia-born poet Kweku Abimbola, whose award-winning first collection of poetry Saltwater Demands a Psalm was published by Graywolf Press in…
Island sounds—A playlist compiled by Tymon Smith
Tymon Smith is out of office on an Indian Ocean island. This issue’s JRB playlist was delivered by message in…
Short, sharp but eclectically ear-pricking—A playlist compiled by Tymon Smith
There’s not much to say about this playlist, perhaps because there’s not much one can say about the exasperating state…
A Christmas Miracle at the South African Post Office—A playlist compiled by Tymon Smith
For the Record: It’s the end of the year and so time to file another stinker away and hope that…
Embrace your existential dread—A playlist compiled by Tymon Smith
Back once again with the JRB radio, in a moment when we’re all reminded that there’s nothing quite like the…
Through the fog of pseudoephedrine, codeine and paracetamol—A playlist compiled by Tymon Smith
Through the fog of pseudoephedrine, codeine, paracetamol and all the other drugs familiar to sufferers of the dreaded, predictable and…
‘I am proud that I surrendered to poetry in the ways I did’—Katleho Kano Shoro in conversation with Makhosazana Xaba
This is the second in a series of long-form interviews by Patron Makhosazana Xaba to be hosted on The JRB,…
A recent, and very suspicious, lack of loadshedding—A playlist compiled by Tymon Smith
As the brief respite offered by a recent, and very suspicious, lack of loadshedding ends and we are reminded by…
Remember, with your noise cancelling headphones on, you can’t hear anyone scream, a playlist compiled by Tymon Smith
The JRB presents tunes and accompanying editorial from our EAP member Tymon Smith. The Minister of Audioacity presents a first salvo in his…
Forty tracks, 174 minutes, a playlist compiled by Tymon Smith
The JRB presents tunes and accompanying editorial from our EAP member Tymon Smith. In desperation not to make this month’s missive another depressingly…
Sakifo to get you through the loadshedding, a playlist compiled by Tymon Smith
The JRB presents tunes and accompanying editorial from our EAP member Tymon Smith. It’s been a long, cold winter. It’s also been dark…
Celebrate lucky number issue 50 with playlist #13, compiled by Tymon Smith
The JRB presents tunes and accompanying editorial from our EAP member Tymon Smith. 13, like De La Soul’s 3, is a magic number….
Don’t mention Ukraine, a playlist compiled by Tymon Smith
The JRB presents tunes and accompanying editorial from our EAP member Tymon Smith. It is a new year and that means more issues…
Beware the ides of Dezemba, a playlist compiled by Tymon Smith
The JRB presents tunes and accompanying editorial from our EAP member Tymon Smith. It’s the end of the year as we count it…
Understanding Pan-Africanist struggles for global slavery and colonialism reparations, by Adekeye Adebajo
The JRB presents an edited excerpt from the Introduction to The Pan-African Pantheon: Prophets, Poets and Philosophers by Adekeye Adebajo….
Love and sex, hope and freedom, a playlist compiled by Tymon Smith
The JRB presents tunes and accompanying editorial from our EAP member Tymon Smith. This month’s playlist is shortish, sharpish and summerish. There’s love…
Dreams of summer, a playlist compiled by Tymon Smith
The JRB presents tunes and accompanying editorial from our EAP member Tymon Smith. This edition of Radio JRB has no overarching theme or…
A Midwinter’s Musical Tale, compiled by Tymon Smith
The JRB presents tunes and accompanying editorial from our EAP member Tymon Smith. Natalie Portman and I are exactly the same age, born…
An autumn megamix playlist, compiled by Tymon Smith
The JRB presents tunes and accompanying editorial from our EAP member Tymon Smith. Just in time for the season’s change, here is this…
We’re still here—a playlist to kick off 2021, compiled by Tymon Smith
The JRB presents tunes and accompanying editorial from our EAP member Tymon Smith. So here we are in 2021, a supposed…
See you on the other side—a playlist for a Joburg December, compiled by Tymon Smith
The JRB presents tunes and accompanying editorial from our EAP member Tymon Smith. Ah, yes, December, month of sun and fun…
Boiling heat, followed by spectacular electric storms, followed by more boiling heat—a playlist for a Joburg summer, compiled by Tymon Smith
The JRB presents tunes and accompanying editorial from our EAP member Tymon Smith. I’m moving so all the records have…
Constantly risking absurdity—a playlist for impossible times, compiled by Tymon Smith
The JRB presents tunes and accompanying editorial from our EAP member Tymon Smith. The people who know say that life…
Making Piles, Telling Tales—an apocalypse playlist, compiled by Tymon Smith
The JRB presents tunes and accompanying editorial from our EAP member Tymon Smith. And so here we still are. Mostly…
A lockdown playlist, 60 songs to see you through, compiled by Tymon Smith
The editors of the JRB should’ve known better. They are well aware that I have a significant vinyl addiction and…
Poetry of social obliteration and intimacy—Vonani Bila reviews KwaNobuhle Overcast, the new collection by award-winning poet Ayanda Billie
Vonani Bila considers KwaNobuhle Overcast, the latest book of poetry from Ayanda Billie, who won a South African Literary Award…
How Hip Hop is helping a new generation to ‘read the world’—Read an excerpt from Neva Again: Hip Hop Art, Activism and Education in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Hip Hop is producing a new generation of readers and writers in a world that operates in diverse literary forms,…
Wider than the Black Atlantic—Bongani Madondo listens in on Kwame Brathwaite’s visual sounds of Blackness, from the photo book Black Is Beautiful
Contributing Editor Bongani Madondo unmoors Kwame Brathwaite’s Black Is Beautiful from mono-dimensional notions of the Black Atlantic into a New African Globalism of…
Writing our Blackness into existence—Ntombizikhona Valela reviews Born to Kwaito by Esinako Ndabeni and Sihle Mthembu
Born to Kwaito: Reflections on the Kwaito Generation cranks up the volume of the unsung and barely documented soundtrack of ‘freedom’,…
[The JRB Daily] ‘None But Ourselves’—Percy Zvomuya charts the sonic cartography of a revolution in the new Chimurenga Chronic: ‘The Invention of Zimbabwe’
Image: Bob Marley performing at the Zimbabwe Independence celebration, Rufaro Stadium, Harare, 18 April 1980 The new issue of Chimurenga’s…
[City Editor] ‘I try to appreciate township solidarity without romanticising it’: Niq Mhlongo chats to Jennifer Malec about Soweto, Under the Apricot Tree
The JRB Editor Jennifer Malec chatted to City Editor Niq Mhlongo about the banning of Inxeba, writing to music, and his brand…