The film The Music Returns to Kai-as, made through the AHRC project Future Pasts, was shown and discussed as part of an open online event hosted by the National Theatre of Namibia and the Owela Live Arts Collective Trust on 31st July. Entitled ‘Kgala!Namib Sonic and Musical Epistemologies’, the event seeks to critically imagine ‘the notion of the Namibian sound as one that brings together diverse people within the realities of colonial modernity’.

The Music Returns to Kai-as is an outcome of oral history, memory mapping and musical heritage research, connecting histories and place in an area that is now a major tourism concession in west Namibia. The film is a collaboration with several local organisations: the Hoanib Cultural Group, the Nami-Daman Traditional Authority, Sesfontein Conservancy and Save the Rhino Trust Namibia. It can be viewed online on vimeo: 30 minute edit here; 52 minute version here, plus a blog about the film here.