In this seminar/concert hybrid, we explore artistic movements, performances, and the ever-evolving musical exchanges between the past and the present and across continents and borders. Specifically, we invite participants to think about music and performance as possible sites of preservation, transformation and negotiations of diasporic identities.
Tickets / Zoom Registration
John Pfumogena will be presenting “Storytelling in Mbira music”
He will be sharing his work on the history embedded within the oral traditions of Southern Africa with a focus on traditional and contemporary ritual and performance in Zimbabwe.
Pete Yelding will be presenting “Awakening historic threads through musical translation”
His research awakens dormant historic threads through the process of translating embodied musical knowledge from one mode to another. He will share the musical lineage of his Ustad and the history of the sarod and the cello. He will also reflect on the movement of performers of Romani origin and how this is entangled in his work. His presentation will be followed by a 10-minute performance on cello.
John is a Zimbabwean Music Composer, Theatre Director/Practitioner and Actor/Musician who is published by Warner Chappell Music (Warner Music Group).
His Discography includes the collaborative album ‘Sounds Of Refuge’ with Sudanese musician Mohamed Sarrar (Executive Production by Good Chance Theatre). John is a co-writer and performer on Sunny Jain’s album ‘Phoenix Rise’.
As a composer and music director, he has worked on the critically acclaimed play ‘The Jungle’ by Good Chance Theatre. John has created a multi-disciplinary show called ‘BUNKER OF ZION’, which is completely scored by Zimbabwean Marimba and Mbira and is co-produced with The Collaborative Touring Network.
John Pfumojena, also professionally known as John Falsetto, is a recipient of the OBIE Special Citation Award (NYC) for his work on ‘The Jungle’ play, and the Broadway World San Francisco Award for ‘Best Featured actor in a Play’ for the same production. Furthermore, the Zimbabwe Achievers’ Awards (UK) presented John with an Honorary ‘Cultural Ambassador’ Award. He played the iconic role of Peter Pan in the National Theatre Productions’ ‘Peter Pan’. Furthermore, John has worked in productions at the Young Vic, the Old Vic, Shakespeare’s Globe, St Annes Warehouse (NYC), the Playhouse West End, and The Curran in San Francisco amongst others.
His music can be found on Spotify. John is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Humanities Cultural Programme. You can also find him on Twitter and Instagram.
Pete is a cellist, sitarist and vocalist from a family of travelling Showpeople and PhD candidate at Bath Spa and Exeter Universities.
While his grandfather was the last Yelding to live a Showman’s life on the road, Pete continues the family’s trade of performing into at least its 7th generation. He fell in love with the cello at aged 4. Growing up, his mother — an illustrator and artist — took him in an illustrated caravan to small fairs, camps and festivals, where he would meet and play with musicians from every continent. This gave him the grounding for his musical life today.
Pete’s journey into Hindustani music was at the beginning of his cello and composition studies at Birmingham Conservatoire, where he took a short course in sitar with Clem Alford. Over the following 10 years after graduating, alongside his numerous creative projects, he received further sitar training from Jonathan Mayer of the Senia veen-kar Gharana and playing weddings and restaurants. During this time he completed a Master’s in Creative Practice at Goldsmiths and also received vocal tuition from Rauf Saami and tuition in string performance techniques from Esraj player, Gurbaksh Singh and West African Griots, Juldeh Camara, Jally Kebba Susso and Sura Susso.
In 2020, Pete was funded by Arts Council England to travel to Kolkata and spend an intensive period studying sitar under the legendary sarod player, Ustad Irfan Muhammad Khan of the Lucknow-Shahjahanpur Gharana. He is now concentrating on fully adopting the performance style and musical knowledge of this gharana in his practice. To that end, he is studying towards a PhD, funded by the South West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership, at Bath Spa and Exeter Universities. His research examines the body as a musical archive and traces the embodied knowledge of his ustad’s Gharana through translations between sarod, sitar and cello.
Over his professional career Pete has collaborated with artists such as Zinzi Minott, Mammal Hands, Iqbal Khan, Talvin Singh, Sura Susso, Jonathan Mayer, Shagufta Iqbal, & Amadou Diagne; and organisations such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, Bristol Old Vic, Cape Farewell & Birmingham REP. You can follow him on Twitter.