Jon is one of many guests for the upcoming BBC Radio 3 Sunday Feature, “Classical Africa,” hosted by acclaimed South African double bassist, writer and broadcaster Leon Bosch. The program airs January 14, 2024 at 6:45 GMT and will be available for streaming afterwards.

Streaming Link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001v4hl

Other BBC Radio programs Jon has been involved in: https://www.silpayamanant.com/radio/bbc-radio/

About the program:

Acclaimed South African double bassist, writer and broadcaster Leon Bosch explores if we can define a distinctively African form of ‘Western classical’ music.

Drawing from his own remarkable journey as a political activist who was locked up in jail in 1970s South Africa – and as someone who for decades sought to stand apart from his African musical heritage – Leon takes us on a journey of discovery through a rich and surprising array of African and European influences: a meeting point where musical and cultural hybrids are made.

He explores the wide kaleidoscope of influences in both directions – from Ayo Bankole and Akin Euba’s ‘African pianism’ in West Africa to the rich array of North African compositions influenced by Arabic music, to the orchestras across the continent – such as Orchestra Ethopia – in which indigenous African and European art music traditions collide.

Leon also opens up fascinating and thorny questions about ‘African-ness’ in music, drawing from his own past. For several decades Leon didn’t play South African music, owing to the trauma of the apartheid era. Now, he embraces it with gusto – and we hear him retrace that journey on location in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

He dismantles the idea of a single ‘African’ classical identity, and follows how different traditions in the east, west and south of Africa – not to mention the Arab-influenced north – have interplayed with colonial, cultural and political identities to create a unique and often overlooked thread of classical music making for more than two centuries.

Contributors include acclaimed musicologist Jon Silpayamanant, researcher and expert on musical hybridity Uchenna Ngwe, pianists Rebeca Omordia and Arouan Benabdallah and composer Edewede Oriwoh – with art music spanning the entire continent, from Nigeria to Egypt to South Africa.

Produced by Steven Rajam
An Overcoat Media Production