The Listening Room: The Sound and the Word 001

There’s a darkness on the edge of town. I often feel it as a hum. Many nights, alone in my room, I have only to stand still to know that this hum will find me. This is what listening to music feels like. It’s so beautiful, even in its ugliness, that I offer myself, body and soul, to it. The music has dragged itself along the oceans to bring me cowrie shells and fragments of broken hearts, like mine, to try and patch the discoloured, mismatched pieces of our heartbreaks together. It’s brought me sturdy dancing shoes so that I will be the last to leave the dance-floor at a party. With all these offerings in my hands, why should I ever feel lonely? The mad poets of the world have put their loneliness in the music so their lonely rubs against my lonely, softening its jagged edges. I have only to stand next to another person to share this feeling. No speaking, or thinking, or even touching. The music will do all of this for us.

1. Role Model - Internet Girl

2. Prayer Factory - Florence + The Machine

3. The Dead - Nakhane

4. Demons - Doja Cat

5. We Are The Dead - David Bowie

6. Girls Against God - Florence + The Machine

7. Jóga (Strings&Vocals) - Björk

8. Ghost Town - The Specials

9. West End Girls - Pet Shop Boys

10. Darkness On The Edge of Town - Bruce Springsteen

11. Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley

12. Like A Prayer – Madonna

— Moso Sematlane

Find playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2RcmnfyXNr7ASmPyANxAoY...

A black cat waits for me in the yard. His sad eyes stare into my soul. His body is stiff—with the exception of the head—he’s sprawled, painfully, on a blanket of dry, fallen leaves. The cat maintains an unflinching gaze, a piercing gaze, as if to ask me something, or to tell me something—something of utmost importance, with his eyes.

“What a sad cat,” a thought comes to my mind. “What a sad man,” he must be thinking, too. I go into the house and put on a record. It has various songs that carry bright melodies. They don’t necessarily promise that things will get better for me, or the cat. At least not today. I turn up the volume so that he can hear the music from outside. I come back into the daylight, sit in the dirt, and face the sad cat so that we can listen together. Inside, Gil Scott-Heron growls, “I’ll take care of you,” above the stringed instruments. The cat pulls his gaze away from mine, and lets his head rest on the ground, as if to go to sleep. The afternoon marches on. The light of day begins to disappear. The blackness of night approaches. The sad cat breathes his last. The once sad eyes turn grey. Tears begin to stream from my own sad eyes.

1. Khala My Friend - Amanaz

2. Favourite Kind of Girl - Gotts Street Park, Flikka

3. Into Nirvana - Maverick Sabre

4. Nazo Nazo - Kikagaku Moyo

5. Crucify Your Mind - Rodriguez

6. Exploration (A New Phase) - Sankomota

7. Menahan Street Band - Queens Highway

8. Time Moves Slow - BADBADNOTGOOD, Samuel T. Herring

9. The Good Ones - Widowspeak

10. Travelling Light - Leonard Cohen

11. I’ll Take Care of You - Gil Scott-Heron

12. Star - Allah-Las

13. Won’t You Come back Home – Devendra Banhart

— Leteka Phillip Leteka

Find playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4fjWgZ9qZWnApNZyXWan1J...

When I pass away one day, I like to think the memory of the long bus rides to Maseru whenever I have spent some time at home in the highlands—is one I will cherish the most. It’s the only time I get to appreciate the beauty of this landscape that has, even in my reluctance, enveloped me and made me its citizen. These are the songs that I find myself returning to on those bus rides. Listening to them feels like looking at photographs of the untamed Lesotho landscape, where I was able to freeze the images whirring by. Listening to them, when I am far away from it, in the push-and-pull of city life, (if Maseru can be called a city), takes me right back on that bus, where for a moment, as it arrives in Maseru, I don’t want to get off.

1. Ever Again - Robyn

2. The Bay - Metronomy

3. Sexy Boy - Air

4. PPP - Beach House

5. Taking It Easy - Goodluck

6. Lamp Lady - Sevdaliza

7. Paper Trails - DARKSIDE

8. The Last Exit - Still Corners

9. Veil of White - trentemøller, Lisbet Fritze

10. Bad Kingdom (Lulu’s Version) - Apparat

11. If I’m - Sea Oleena

— Lenka Motlalentoa

Find playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2H66gfd9oGV3FNNZ5XSzTs...

Catch my drift….because of the first song by Khamari, called ‘Drifting’. I compiled this playlist because a friend of mine, Nabeel, listened to one song I had up on my Instagram stories. He suggested that I should make a playlist for him and my close circle of friends. This was my first ever Spotify playlist, consisting of new-age RnB sounds. Also, catch my drift as in, “Do you get what I’m about?”

1. Drifting - Khamari

2. Gold - Brandon Banks

3. Disaronno Straight - Ragz Originale

4. Breathe (Interlude) - RAAHiiM

5. Always On My Mind - Terrace Martin, Alex Isley

6. Cruising - Evil Needle

7. Family - DECAP, Kiefer, Kyla Moscovich

8. Rolling Stone - JMSN

9. Fantasy - Tiffany Gouché

10. whole - Amarafleur

11. June’s Cry - Venna

12. Born Again - V, Jill Scott

— Jeremiah ‘Skaftin’ Lebea

Find playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5axogG3chHMAY435mYqgiB...

This playlist reminds me of the time I was a young girl, living in a yard with tall grass. I had skipped over the largest snake I’d ever seen. It slithered by me, and I was rattled, but ultimately, unharmed. It’s a distant memory. Now, I’m sitting at the table with my laptop open, thinking about being at the beach at night. My mind is not here. Nor is my body. But everything else infront of me is, along with the playlist, just white noise.

1. Medicine – Clark, Thom Yorke

2. Horse – Keeyley Forsyth

3. Rah – Desire Marea, Zöe Modiga

4. Unitiled – John Frusciante

5. 3WW – alt-J, Little Simz

6. Soul People – Machineri

7. Lipstick On The Glass – Wolf Alice

8. Obscured by Clouds – Pink Floyd

9. Jungle – Jimi Hendrix

10. Running (Asibaleki) – BLK JKS

11. Sea Skull – Sannie Fox

12. Fog – Nakhane

— Tšepiso Mahase

Find playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2qdtuWv0jQrbE5eKUWHmYa...