Gregory Maqoma’s Genesis: Black is the colour of our beginning

We are literally rewriting history. Through testimonies, poems, plays, novels, and performances such as Gregory Maqoma’s Genesis: The Beginning and End of Time, which had its world premier at The Baxter Theatre on Wednesday night.

Ours is a history that needs rewriting. The voices that were silenced for so long need to speak. And to shout, and weep, and sing. Not just ours, but all of the global south. And it is past time to rewrite the history of the still subjugated in the north, and the west, and the east. Perhaps that will be our task, once accounts have been settled.

It is a delicate time this, the post and de-colonial. The temptation to set fire to it all, to watch what was hated burn, is ever present. Cool heads, and hearts purged of vengeance are needed. It is easy for the oppressed to become the oppressor, simply a matter of mistaking revenge for justice. In this, Mandela set a good path, saved another generation from spilling its blood.

Creation, and remembrance is needed in this period between building and burning, for the old songs to be sung again, and new ones born.

In this milieu Genesis is a new song arising from the old. It is a dance that seeks an epic arc from what Maqoma calls pre-colonial “ancient Time [sic]”, through industrial oppression, to post-colonial “(re)birth of the nation state”. It is also an opera infused with what has come to be labelled ‘spiritual jazz’ but is simply the moving, soulful, boundless yet disciplined music of Africa.

Spiritual is an apt term though, the mix of jazz written by Nhalanhla Mahlangu and operatic vocals by Anelisa Stuurman grounds you in your body while drawing your soul out beyond the confines of the room. This while you are swept up in the impeccable choreography of seven or eight superb dancers swirling and shifting, rolling and … grinding through time. Along with fantastic lighting by Oliver Hauser playing amidst elegant, tasteful costuming by Black Coffee, Genesis is a spectacle that returns the word awesome to its original meaning. Even without the impeccable dancing, the music is superb and could be, should be, recorded as an album.

This masterful blend of elements that are accomplished enough to stand on their own – music and movement – are also what saves the work from the conceptual flaw within.

Which is its uncritical paean to Africanness. It comes dangerously close to nationalism. That being said, the depiction of the ancient time does not flinch from the superstition and the blood, there is little romanticism of a perfect past. The colonial period is depicted as it should be; a time of suffering, oppression and subjugation which was universal for black and brown people the world over, and doubled-down over here in the form of apartheid. It is the post and de-colonial period that becomes problematic in Genesis, ringing with a circa 1997 sentiment. Although the director’s note mentions the “sometimes fractured and febrile” state of the new birthed nation when “freedom fighters and leaders would prove to be mortals”, there is just a short passage in which the building of the bridge, pedestal, crypt, cornice, headstone, etc. repeatedly fails. But thereafter, and particularly in the last movement, you’d think we’d finally created our utopia, which is clearly not the case. Not here, nor anywhere in the global south. Not yet.

At the same time, there is absolutely a place for claiming Africanness, for shaking off the psychological shackles of the oppressor and reclaiming our origins. Steve Biko, who is referenced in one of the most moving sections of the opera, said as much, but if this self-celebration is not tempered with the true humility that honesty engenders, then it is in danger of becoming no different from the Aryanism that gave rise to colonialism in the first place.

Credit due, though, that there is no depiction of a de-colonial hankering for the pre-colonial; there is acceptance off irrevocable change. However, there is also no acknowledgement of the tension between the embrace of colonial trappings (the fruits of capitalism) and the rejection of racial systems that wrought them. Proving the point, but perhaps unfairly, the bordering-on-nationalistic celebration of Africanness takes place within a western form, being opera and the theatre.

There is a beauty in this tension. An apt example is the blues and jazz which were and are created by Africans transforming the guitar and piano and trumpet to produce music the instruments’ original creators had not the capacity to dream of. A reference to this tension could allay many aesthetic misgivings and save Genesis from a dead end – despite the mastery inherent in its constituent parts – of being a nation-building production.

It is moving, it is beautiful, every performer and contributor is of the highest calibre. The problem, really, is that Gayton McKenzie will absolutely adore this work.

Further production credits:

Librettist, Karthika Nair; Movement Analyst, Shanell Winlock Pailman; Set Designer, Willy Cessa.

Dance performers: Gilbert Goliath, Monicca Magoro, Nathan Botha, Noko Moeketsi, Roseline Wilkens, Thabang Mdlalose, Tshepo Molusi.

Music performers: Anelisa Phewa, Anelisa Stuurman, Bongiwe Lusizi, Xolisile Bongwana, Yogin Sullaphen.

Photo by Arthur Dlamini