Tshepo Koka, Author at Global South Media Network

THE SPIRITUAL WEIGHT OF SONNY ROLLINS: REFLECTIONS THROUGH RENE MCLEAN

As news of Sonny Rollins‘s passing travelled across the jazz world, much was written about the musician. The giant. The innovator. The architect of modern tenor saxophone. The man who stood shoulder to shoulder with Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach, Clifford Brown, Charlie Parker and the other titans who altered the course of twentieth-century […]

MILES DAVIS CENTENARY DIALOGUE: THE SOUND BETWEEN US

A Brief Note on the Journey What began as a series of scattered conversations between two friends about Miles Davis slowly evolved into something neither of us had initially anticipated. At first, we believed we were merely exchanging reflections on music, albums, transitions in sound, and the enduring mystery of a man who continues to […]

THE INCANDESCENCE OF MILES DAVIS

There is something unsettling about the late works of Miles Davis. Not the music. We have learned how to speak about that. We have found language for Kind of Blue, for Bitches Brew, for the many revolutions that made Miles legible to history. It is the drawings that resist us. In the latter years of […]

SKETCHES OF BECOMING: CONVERSATIONS ON MILES

There are friendships forged in proximity, and others tempered in absence. Stretched across borders, tested by history, and sustained by memory. The musical reflections that follow emerge from the latter: a lifelong dialogue between us. Our paths diverged early under the pressures of exile, yet remained tethered by a shared sensibility, a common ear, and […]

THE SOLITUDE OF SILENCE: LIFE THROUGH A HORN AND LESSONS FROM MILES DAVIS

Every person eventually discovers an instrument through which existence becomes intelligible. For some it is a pen, for others a camera, a classroom, a stethoscope, a courtroom, or the quiet patience of a workshop bench. The instrument becomes more than a tool; it becomes a lens through which the world is interpreted. Over time it […]

HUGH’S: A JAZZ CLUB, A LEGACY, A HOMECOMING

Honouring Hugh Masekela and the Spirit of Jazz that travels the world There are places where music is performed, and then there are places where music lives. Jazz, perhaps more than any other genre, requires a home that allows it to breathe, rooms where improvisation hangs in the air like incense, where the distance between […]

THE DEGENERATION OF THE EPISTEMOLOGIES OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT: DECODING THE BUDGET SPEECH

Let me begin by disarming the title. Degeneration of the epistemologies of economic thought sounds like something you would only whisper in a doctoral seminar room. It sounds intimidating. Dense. Perhaps even deliberately obscure. But it is actually very simple. It asks one question: How did we forget how to think about the economy properly? […]

IN THE HOUSE OF JESSE JACKSON: HOW A CIVIL RIGHTS GIANT RE-ANCHORED A YOUNG SOUTH AFRICAN IN EXILE

The news of the passing of Reverend Jesse Jackson arrives with a weight that is both public and profoundly personal. To the world, he will be remembered as a towering figure of the global freedom struggle, a relentless advocate for civil rights and a moral voice that refused to be silenced. To South Africa, he […]

MAXIMUM DISCLOSURE. MINIMUM CONSEQUENCE. WELCOME TO MZANSI.

From boardroom liberation to procedural democracy: the quiet making of a government fluent in process and allergic to consequence. There was a moment, not announced and not televised, when South Africa quietly changed posture. Not the moment of liberation. Not the first election. Not the swearing-in ceremonies or victory speeches. A quieter moment. A moment […]

ANDY KAWA STORY: RECOGNITION, RESURRECTION AND RESTITUTION

There are wounds that never fully close. They remain tender beneath the scar, reminders of violence that was not only physical but existential. On a December evening in 2010, on the shores of King’s Beach in Port Elizabeth, Andy Kawa was cast into such a wound. What unfolded was more than an assault on her […]

BLACK TIE, BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS

There’s a certain magic that occurs when a room full of Black people gathers in grace, power, and purpose. Cloaked in tuxedos, evening gowns, pride, and legacy. It’s not simply a soirée. It’s not just another awards dinner. It’s a reclamation. A declaration. A spiritual conversation carried out in silk and basslines, laughter and remembered […]

THE VISIBLE COUNCIL, GUIDED BY THE INVISIBLE

For three days and two nights, tucked away in the quiet embrace of a farm, I sat with men who have lived more than half a century of South Africa’s unspoken histories. It was less a gathering than a council. Visible in our laughter, debate, and storytelling, yet guided always by an invisible hand of […]

Author: Tshepo Koka