New Musics of Mourning, Solidarity, and Hope from South Africa and Bangladesh to Palestine

Abstract

This article examines improvised musical performances of mourning and solidarity in South Africa and Bangladesh during moments of political upheaval and global crisis. Drawing on ethnographic research, participant observation, and secondary sources, the article explores how jam sessions, protest music, and collective rituals of grief not only express sorrow at state violence and betrayal, but also prefigure possibilities for more just futures. In South Africa, jazz jams and solidarity performances in 2024 drew on the country’s anti-apartheid cultural traditions to voice grief at the failures of the African National Congress while articulating connections to Palestinian liberation. In Bangladesh, music during and after the July 2024 uprisings mobilized grief for slain students and protestors, while hip hop cyphers, protest songs, and activist jams carved out sonic spaces for hope amidst violence and uncertainty. In both cases, improvised performances embodied what scholars term “prefigurative politics”: enacting freedom, care, and solidarity in the present, even as they mourn the past and confront the brutality of the present. Yet these spaces were also shaped by exclusions, particularly along gendered, racial, and queer lines, raising questions about whose grief is witnessed and whose futures are imagined. By comparing musical practices across two distinct yet interconnected political contexts, the author argues that improvised sounds of mourning and resistance illuminate both the potential and the limits of solidarity. These sonic performances demonstrate how music can animate grief, sustain movements, and gesture toward emancipatory horizons, while also revealing the tensions that structure collective life under global racial capitalism.