Evans is a place on Earth: Sounds of Swakopmund, Rhythms of Rehoboth:Stolen Moments @ SOAS.

"Imagine you had never known about the musical riches of your country. Your ears had been used to nothing but the dull sounds of your country's former occupants and the blaring church and propaganda songs that were sold to you as your country's musical legacy. Until all at once, a magnitude of unknown sounds, melodies, and songs appear. This sound, that roots your culture to the musical influence of jazz, blues, and pop from around the world, is unique, yet familiar. It revives memories of bygone days, recites the history of your homeland and enables you for the first time to experience the emotions, joys, and pains of your ancestors" - Aino Moongo.

Stolen Moments:Nambian Music History Untold at the School of Oriental and African Studies' (SOAS) Brunel Gallery in Bloomsbury seeks to tell a tale of Namibia's musical heritage, how that heritage was hidden by that country's colonial masters (Germany), and how, eventually, it came to flower. In many cases long after the people who made it had given up on making a living from music either due to adversity, despair, or death.

It's an ambitious undertaking but it's a worthwhile exercise. The music of many African countries (I'm thinking Mali, South Africa, Senegal, DR Congo, and Nigeria to name just five) has been well documented and released on compilations by labels like Analog Africa, Soul Jazz, and Awesome Tapes From Africa but Namibian music has barely made a dent in the ears of discerning music fans in the West.

John Liebenberg - Disco (1989)

Whilst Stolen Moments is a fun, and enjoyable, show I'm not totally convinced it will change very much in terms of exposing people to music from Namibia. The Brunel Gallery is not a well known space, there weren't many people there, and what exhibits were available to look at, great though they were, don't tell us that much about what music there is on offer from Namibia.

There's lots of photographs of concert halls and mocked up, fictitious, album sleeves and it's all lovely to look at but it means the real story of Namibian music ends up being slightly sidelined, even in a show that claims its primary mission is to not do so. Which is a shame. Because what you can hear sounds pretty good.

John Muafangejo - No way to go what can I do? (1973)

There's a filing cabinet full of archives and a trestle table set up so you can pore over them but, knowing nothing about the scene, it's hard to know where one would start. There are also listening posts dotted around where you can tune in to albums but as I attended towards the end of the run many of them, somewhat predictably, were no longer functioning.

That's not to disrespect the sterling work done by Aino Moongo, Thorsten Schutte, and Eljakim 'Baby' Doeseb in Windhoek researching the music of the country from the start of the fifties to the end of the eighties. Music that, for the most part, was suppressed by apartheid when it was made. It's easy to overlook the fact that apartheid wasn't just in South Africa but also spread into South-West Africa (Namibia's name up until 1990) which fell under South African administration during that period.

Before South Africa took over, the country that became Namibia had been known, since 1884, as German South West Africa and you can see in some of the names, and even in some of the architecture, that the German influence has remained. It's fun to imagine nights of wild abandon in the Katutura Community Hall in Windhoek and the Kapps-Konzert und Ball-Saal in Luderitz (Stephan Zaubitzer's large scale photographs really give you a sense of place) but it still doesn't actually tell us much about the music itself.

Stephan Zaubitzer - Katutura Community Hall, Windhoek (2015)

Stephan Zaubitzer - Kapps-Konzert und Ball-Saal, Luderitz (2015)

SWAPO Rally

The photos of the SWAPO (South West Africa People's Organisation - a former independence movement that is now, and has been since 1990, Namibia's ruling party) rally at least give us an idea of what instrumentation was being used. The photographer has not been named (and in other photos there are no titles, dates, or anything - I've labelled them when possible) and that's possibly because the people taking these snaps weren't thinking about art or posterity but just trying to capture the feeling of an event. It's equally likely that the level of disenfranchisement the black community of Namibia would have felt at the time would have meant it would have felt incredibly unlikely that these images would ever reach a wider audience, would ever turn up in a gallery in far flung London!

John Liebenberg - The Music Man (1987)

John Liebenberg - Recording Speeches/The inauguration of Bishop Frederick at Okahnadja (1986)

Another shame. They're great photos. John Liebenberg's are fantastic too. He's really caught both the wide expanse of the Namib desert as well as the excitement of discovering new technology. The 1986 image of a large group of men proudly displaying their portable radio cassette players is priceless. It's frozen history.

Among the actual artists who have records lying around in a corner near some cushions and headphones are names like Mela Ngwanana, Michael Owos-Oab, Samuel Flermuys, Manfred Hinz & Helgard, and Jackson Kaujeua - all of which were new to me and all of which, I'm sorry to say, I was unable to listen to. Somebody had beaten me to the 'cans' and wasn't showing any sign of moving any time soon.

Stolen Moments Archive

Stephan Zaubitzer - Wilhelmshof Hotel, Okahandja (2015)

Stephan Zaubitzer - Ou Hupuku's (old location), Keetmanshoop (2015)

The exhibition, however, was less interested in telling a history of the development of the music scene in Namibia and more concerned with asking us to think about more abstracted questions. Can history be stolen? If so by whom and how? How long is a moment? Best, and most confusing, of all - can a subaltern speak?

The photographs, the faked album covers, the artworks, and the memories all combined to build up a picture of not what was, because nobody can really be sure what that was, but what might have been. There was a ninety minute film, inconveniently situated at the bottom of a staircase, if you wanted a more detail specific story but the general curatorial approach erred towards a blurry, half-remembered, look back at a past that the remaining interested parties now remember quite differently to each other.

Fillipus Sheehama - Lyden (Naftalia) in Action (2016)

Kapanda Nagombe - Old School Dance (2016)

Stephan Zaubitzer - Gawanab Dance Hall (Kuisebmond), Walvis Bay (2015)

Bennardo Santos - The Dance (2016)

I'm not totally sure if this 'boundless narratives' theory really worked but it has thrown up some interesting art. Favourites of mine included Bennardo Santos' colourful and jazzy The Dance, the scratchy untitled work of Fillipus Sheehama, and Romeo Sinkala's sub-Saharan Warhol schtick.

'Papa' Ndasuunye Shikongeni - Kaap se Dance (2016)

Fillipus Sheehama - Untitled (2016)

Romeo Sinkala - Untitled (2016)

Sandile Pazvakavambwa - Reho Combo (2016)

Reho Combo (by Sandile Pazvakavamnbwa) had the feel of a deep south hoedown while maintaining a little German colonial flavour while the portraits of Steffen List and Kapanda Nagombe's monochrome musing have much less to do with Europe and belong far more to the continent of Africa.

I came away learning less than I'd hope to about Namibian music and a lot more than I'd expected to about contemporary Namibian art so despite the exhibition not providing what I'd actually hoped to find it did pleasantly surprise me on another front. For a free show, it was a good one. I'd love to see a more in depth study of the music from Namibia as well as other less sonically celebrated nations in Africa at some point in the near future but, for now, this was a nice start. Thanks to Misa for the heads up on this show. Learning expands great souls.