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…
Category: 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…
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…
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…
A book about embrace, but also about the chokehold of segregation—Carina Venter reviews Mr Entertainment: The Story of Taliep Petersen by Paula Fourie
Carina Venter reviews Paula Fourie’s Mr Entertainment: The Story of Taliep Petersen, finding a life that encompasses a country and…
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….
[The JRB Daily] 2022 Humanities and Social Sciences Awards winners announced—‘casting a celebratory light on those whose work often goes unnoticed’
Image: The 2022 HSS Awards winners. Back, from left: Aryan Kaganof, Natalia Molebatsi, Napjadi Letsoalo, Thulasizwe Simpson, Nthikeng Mohlele, Mandla…
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…
[Photo Editor] Greg Tate in Johannesburg by Victor Dlamini
Victor Dlamini is The JRB’s Photo Editor. We feature his work on our Instagram channel. See this ten-year retrospective of his portraits. View this…
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…
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,…
Voices as powerful as guns: Panashe Chigumadzi on Dorothy Masuka’s (w)ri(o)ting woman-centred Pan-Africanism
The JRB Contributing Editor Panashe Chigumadzi presents a new reading of the work, career and life of Dorothy Masuka, arguing that…
We told her she was Nina Simone—Bongani Madondo reviews She Begat This: 20 Years of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Joan Morgan
As Bongani Madondo experienced tinges of nostalgia occasioned by the twentieth anniversary of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, HipHop Feminist…
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’,…
New poetry by Gabeba Baderoon: ‘Promised land’
The Johannesburg Review of Books presents a new poem by Gabeba Baderoon, from her forthcoming collection The History of Intimacy, out…
[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…
[Photo Editor] Original portraits: Victor Dlamini’s tribute in pictures to Hugh Masekela, the magician
Victor Dlamini is The JRB’s Photo Editor. We feature his work on our Instagram channel. Don’t miss the ten-year retrospective…
[The JRB Daily] The early years: Read an excerpt from Hugh Ramapolo Masekela’s autobiography, Still Grazing
Hugh Ramapolo Masekela died in Johannesburg today, at the age of seventy-eight, after a long battle with prostate cancer. The…
Hugh Ramapolo Masekela, legendary jazz musician, RIP
Hugh Ramapolo Masekela, one of South Africa’s most celebrated and pioneering musicians, has died in Johannesburg. Masekela had been fighting…
A stranger in ‘the Village’: Bongani Madondo remembers the magic of The Village Voice in print
When New York’s pout-fully punk weekly, The Village Voice, announced the end of its print issue last month, Gotham City…
‘Three great hopes for a post-apartheid culture, gone too soon’—Hedley Twidle reflects on Phaswane Mpe, Moses Taiwa Molelekwa and K Sello Duiker
Firepool: Experiences in an Abnormal World Hedley Twidle Kwela, 2017 The following is an excerpt from Firepool: Experiences in an…
Step on the Bassline: Bongani Madondo unlocks a torrent of Joburg memories
I don’t believe any biographer can be objective. —Mark Gevisser … I saw a sign over a door in café…