SiyaKhula Live | Music, Memory and Resistance in South Africa with Dr Carina Venter
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Can a song carry the weight of a nation's history? Can the act of listening — truly listening — become a form of ethical and political engagement? And three decades into South Africa's democracy, what does resistance sound like now, when the struggle is no longer fought in the streets but in the quieter, more complex terrain of identity, memory, and belonging?
In this episode of SiyaKhula Live, Dr Katlego Letlonkane is joined by Dr Carina Venter, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Music at Stellenbosch University and Chair of the South African Society for Research in Music, for a Freedom Month conversation that moves well beyond the playlist.
Speaking remotely from North Carolina, USA, Dr Venter unpacks how music functions not merely as entertainment but as a living archive — a site where memory is stored, identity is shaped, and the possibility of freedom is continuously reimagined.
What we cover in this episode:
- Music as Archive: How South African music has absorbed and preserved the stories, pain, tears, joy, and memory of a people across generations — and why that archive matters more, not less, as time passes.
- Resistance in Sound: What resistance has sounded like across South Africa's history, and what it still sounds like today in a democratic society still navigating the unfinished business of transformation.
- Music and Identity: How the music we make and the music we choose to hear shapes who we understand ourselves to be — individually and collectively — and how it opens up new possibilities for reimagining freedom.
- Listening as an Ethical Act: Dr Venter's challenge to move beyond privatised consumption and treat listening as a deliberate, conscious act of recognising others — of hearing not ourselves, but the humanity of those whose stories we might otherwise never encounter.
- What Music Tells Us About the Listener: Why the relationship between music and its audience is never passive — and what our listening habits reveal about our values, our blind spots, and our capacity for empathy.
Key Resources & Highlights:
- The Ethical Listener: Dr Venter's framework for understanding listening not as passive reception but as an active, morally significant engagement with other people's experience.
- South Africa's Musical Archive: Why music may be one of the most complete and emotionally honest records of what this country has lived through — and why protecting and engaging with that archive is an act of collective memory.
- SiyaKhula Live: Anchored by Stellenbosch University's Centre for the Advancement of Social Impact and Transformation (@sutransformation_) and the human resources department, SiyaKhula Live is a weekly platform for conversations that inform, challenge, and transform.
MFM 92.6 is committed to conversations that go beyond the surface. This Freedom Month, we ask not only what freedom means on paper — but what it sounds like in practice.
Stream MFM 92.6: www.mfm.co.za
Follow us on Socials: @mfm926
In this episode of SiyaKhula Live, Dr Katlego Letlonkane is joined by Dr Carina Venter, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Music at Stellenbosch University and Chair of the South African Society for Research in Music, for a Freedom Month conversation that moves well beyond the playlist.
Speaking remotely from North Carolina, USA, Dr Venter unpacks how music functions not merely as entertainment but as a living archive — a site where memory is stored, identity is shaped, and the possibility of freedom is continuously reimagined.
What we cover in this episode:
- Music as Archive: How South African music has absorbed and preserved the stories, pain, tears, joy, and memory of a people across generations — and why that archive matters more, not less, as time passes.
- Resistance in Sound: What resistance has sounded like across South Africa's history, and what it still sounds like today in a democratic society still navigating the unfinished business of transformation.
- Music and Identity: How the music we make and the music we choose to hear shapes who we understand ourselves to be — individually and collectively — and how it opens up new possibilities for reimagining freedom.
- Listening as an Ethical Act: Dr Venter's challenge to move beyond privatised consumption and treat listening as a deliberate, conscious act of recognising others — of hearing not ourselves, but the humanity of those whose stories we might otherwise never encounter.
- What Music Tells Us About the Listener: Why the relationship between music and its audience is never passive — and what our listening habits reveal about our values, our blind spots, and our capacity for empathy.
Key Resources & Highlights:
- The Ethical Listener: Dr Venter's framework for understanding listening not as passive reception but as an active, morally significant engagement with other people's experience.
- South Africa's Musical Archive: Why music may be one of the most complete and emotionally honest records of what this country has lived through — and why protecting and engaging with that archive is an act of collective memory.
- SiyaKhula Live: Anchored by Stellenbosch University's Centre for the Advancement of Social Impact and Transformation (@sutransformation_) and the human resources department, SiyaKhula Live is a weekly platform for conversations that inform, challenge, and transform.
MFM 92.6 is committed to conversations that go beyond the surface. This Freedom Month, we ask not only what freedom means on paper — but what it sounds like in practice.
Stream MFM 92.6: www.mfm.co.za
Follow us on Socials: @mfm926
