Basadi Thari tsa Bothakga is an innovative musical storytelling project that brings African indigenous instruments to life as narrators of history, identity, and lived experience. Rooted in South Africa’s rich cultural heritage, the project centres the Uhadi, Mbira, Ramkie, Umakhweyane, and the Kudu Horn not simply as musical tools, but as living storytellers carrying memory, wisdom, and spiritual resonance across generations.
Through improvisation, poetic narration, soundscapes, and movement, the instruments guide audiences through interwoven stories of resilience, healing, gender, spirituality, memory, and community life. Each instrument becomes a character — the Uhadi as a vessel of women’s songs and wisdom, the Mbira as a spiritual mediator, the Kudu Horn as a messenger of history, the Umakhweyane as a bridge between past and present, and the Ramkie as a voice of survival and collective identity. Together, they create an immersive and emotive performance landscape that honours indigenous musical traditions while exploring contemporary forms of theatre-making.
This project is a process-driven creative exploration, developed through research, experimentation, and collaboration. Rather than presenting a finished work, the residency allows the narrative and musical language to evolve organically — exploring how instruments can speak, remember, and connect people to cultural roots. By foregrounding women’s cultural agency and intergenerational knowledge, Basadi Thari tsa Bothakga becomes both an artistic offering and a cultural preservation practice, reaffirming indigenous sound as a powerful archive of African identity. Deeply aligned with CHES’s mission to protect and revitalise heritage through education and performance, the project expands the boundaries of storytelling while creating space for reflection, healing, and cultural dialogue. Ultimately, Basadi Thari tsa Bothakga invites audiences to listen beyond words — to the voices held inside the instruments, the histories they echo, and the futures they continue to shape.
