The concluding four lectures by Ari Sitas will again be delivered across two sessions. They continue the search for a way into music through words, and through examples of musical works that have grappled with the horrors of history while asserting a sense of humanitude since the Second World War.
The fifth lecture delves into the depths of threnody, examining how siyakhala—lamentation—has been woven into sonic landscapes. The sixth explores how repressed pasts, long buried under colonial hubris, are being resuscitated to confront the present and reimagine the future.
The seventh lecture considers how composers and lyricists have responded to singularly catastrophic or perplexing events that continue to defy understanding.
The final lecture turns a critical lens—and ear—toward the contemporary operatic and theatrical forms, questioning whether anything can still be salvaged from their extravagant claims. The series closes with a reflection on this peculiar diaphragmatic activity called song: has it succeeded in expressing the inexpressible, and does it still harbour a radical or emancipatory impulse?
The first event, Lectures 5 & 6, will be followed by the book launch of Ari Sitas’s Passageworks, in the form of a conversation between Ari Sitas, Sarah Mosoetsa and William Kentridge.
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Lectures 5 & 6: 6 August 2025, 17:00-19:00 (book launch: 19:00)
Lectures 7 & 8: 7 August 2025, 17:00-19:00
Where: Welgevallen Community Psychology Clinic, Suidwal Street, Stellenbosch
Wine will be served.
Ari Sitas is a leader in South African Higher Education, and a recipient of the Order of Mapungupwe (OMS) from the South African Presidency. He is also an internationally acclaimed academic, poet and playwright, and an intrepid explorer of sound, musical and otherwise. Having held many professorships, honorary positions and Chairs across the world, Sitas is now an Honorary Professor at the Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Stellenbosch University.
https://arts.sun.ac.za/files/2025/07/Sonic-Defiance-Lectures.pdf