The Music Returns to Kai-as (RIFA)

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"It's really amazing and quite frankly it's also tearful for those that know and understand |gais and arus songs in detail... the sound quality and film quality is very excellent. Thanks for your commitment and time spent on developing the film of this quality. Kai-aios (Thank you)."
Fredrick ||Hawaxab, Namidaman Traditional Authority, Sesfontein, 7 December 2020.

In May 2019, the Future Pasts project, with local organisations in north-west Namibia (the Sesfontein Conservancy, the Namidaman Traditional Authority, and Save the Rhino Trust Namibia), supported the Hoanib Cultural Group from Sesfontein to return to Kai-as – a place where people once lived.

Kai-as is mentioned as an important place in peoples’ pasts in oral history research with elderly people now living on the edge of a major tourism concession. Kai-as and its strong spring of sweet water feature in peoples’ memory as where they would meet when rain season foods became available in this arid landscape. These congregations are remembered as times when people would play their |gais praise songs and arus healing dances. 'Our hearts were happy there', they said.

In the decades since, access has been restricted to places important in peoples’ pasts as land areas were claimed for mining, commercial farming, conservation and tourism.

Our film "The Music Returns to Kai-as" documents the first ‘Kai-as Festival’ held from 22-24 May 2019, in which Sesfontein’s Hoanib Cultural Group returned to play – once again – their |gais songs and arus healing dances there. It celebrates peoples’ resilience in the face of the extreme marginalisation and exclusion effected by processes of colonisation and apartheid.

For more information see blog at: futurepasts.net/post/the-music-returns-to-kai-as-a-film-by-future-pasts

~ Nb. Polyphonic songs are an important part of this film. We recommend using headphones for the audio to experience the full depth and complexity of this music. A large part of the second half of the film is an arus healing dance sequence. The songs and practices here are part of a healing tradition that, whilst not static, is generations old. It is a healing technology and understanding of the causes of, and ways of resolving, dis-ease that comes from a time prior to peoples’ contact with allopathic medicine and that now exists alongside allopathic medicine. A concern that is often mentioned now is around how the changes happening as modernity takes hold, mean that young people are not being called to become arus healers.~

Notes.
This film is shared with the permission of the permission of the Namidaman Traditional Authority and the Hoanib Cultural Group of Sesfontein in north-west Namibia.

The Future Pasts project (futurepasts.net) has worked especially with people who speak Khoekhoegowab, a language that includes four click consonants written and sounding as follows:
| = the ‘tutting’ sound made by bringing the tongue softly down from behind front teeth (dental click) – as used in the term for praise songs: |gais;
ǁ = the clucking sound familiar in urging on a horse (lateral click);
! = a popping sound like mimicking the pulling of a cork from a wine bottle (alveolar click);
ǂ = a sharp, explosive click made as the tongue is flattened and then pulled back from the palate (palatal click).

Future Pasts researchers Sian Sullivan (Bath Spa University) and Welhemina Suro Ganuses (Save the Rhino Trust and Sesfontein resident) facilitated "The Music Returns to Kai-as", with all filming by Bristol-based Namibia specialist film-maker Oliver Halsey (oliverhalsey.net/).

If you would like to support the Hoanib Cultural Group, their families and the resilience of their cultural knowledge, please see futurepasts.net/future-pasts-trust.

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