Tsitsi Jaji
Biographic Data
| ID | 88658 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tsitsi Jaji |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tsitsi |
| FAMILY NAME | Jaji |
| SIGNATURE | JAJI T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Duke University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3484-5784 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 45 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
A Tribute in Verse (Benediction and Translation)
This contribution includes an original poem, “Benediction” in tribute of Valentin-Yves Mudimbe and the first translation in English of selections from Les Fuseaux, parfois (1974). Mudimbe authored several collections in the 1970s, and this translation is intended to draw more scholarly attention to his poetic output
The Cambridge Companion to the Poem
What is a poem? What ideas about the poem as such shape how readers and audiences encounter individual poems? To explore these questions, the first section of this Companion addresses key conceptual issues, from singularity and genre to the poem's historical exchanges with the song and the novel. The second section turns to issues of form, focusing on voice, rhythm, image, sound, diction, and style. The third section considers the poem's social a…
Other Libraries
Poems by Tsitsi Jaji
I. At Independence Hall In the amber light, the heat bottoms out below ground level. This khaki-clad woman guidesus: one day, she says, we will all look back on fossil fuels the same way
Introduction
In any culture, festive events are often far more than simple opportunities to feast and celebrate. They can also be focal points for political or cultural movements, a chance to speak and act in ways that may be forbidden or limited in non-festive times. In the Caribbean, with its particular history of slavery and cross-cultural encounter, festivities were often highly policed, explosive points in the calendar. Slave dances were breaks in the re…
Zimbabwe in Verse
The study of Anglophone African literature has predominantly focused on fiction, and primarily the novel form. Drama's relation to orature and to indigenous performance histories has made it a similarly significant form for African literature. Poetry, however, has received less attention, with most studies focusing on single-authored works. This article proposes an alternative approach, focusing not simply on individual poems or the corpus of ind…
Baba's Voice Mail
baba's voice mail. Tsitsi Jaji (bio) apple is unable to transcribebaba's naturalized speech. out of Africa' s lion's den he strides, to brave each stare. npr says 40% of americacannot read. others don'treally know what the fourth means, what spell it casts.which flags forged,what oath sworn. this elderly black malekeeps driving.an elderly white female, amai,steers him. a wrong turnor sudden brake wouldlaunder them,as in, shit,they'd lose the litt…
Bingo Magazine in the Age of Pan-African Festivals
The large-scale Pan-African festivals held in Senegal, Algeria, and Nigeria (1966–77) are recognized as central to forging a transnational repertoire of cultural practices and memories that are the bedrock of a post-independence global black consciousness. Nevertheless, such festivals necessarily privileged certain artists and cultural workers with the means and/or governmental and United Nations support to travel. During the same era, popular pr…
Fan mail
Ngugi
Within Earshot of Africa-Meditations on The Sound of Culture
This essay takes its cue from Louis Chude-Sokei’s The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics. Chude-Sokei’s specific Caribbean matrix of technologically oriented poetics of the human is extended to African and African American texts, illustrating how blackness registers across distinctive histories. Following Chude-Sokei’s engagement with Sylvia Wynter, the essay begins with the centrality of women’s engagements with technologies for …
And They Didn't Die
for my mother, who has done all things wellI bring a squall of quiet, my hectoring force, to shamethe belated fog of orders and bandages into a fine mist.I am here to squelch reason’s panic. Certaintyis scrambled and we find only Vaseline, thick with scent,and too heavy to churn the waters. If they wept no tearsthey would not know I will not shed any.If there were no tremors they would not know me. Unshaken.I will outlive them. I will bury them i…
Introduction
In this introduction to this special issue, “Genre and Africa,” Jaji and Saint theorize genre from the perspective of the African continent to explore how such an orientation necessarily interrogates and transforms previous understandings of genre. After a brief review of pivotal work in genre studies, the authors turn to Africa’s particular colonial and postcolonial predicaments to theorize the specific interventions to genre theory that such a …
Poetry
The balm served up in Gilead will heal will shrink will shrug off the losses. Profit made elsewhere means that $300 for a bottle of the pills in India/ Less for improv. Hep cats could lay it on ya ... $10 a day or less for Sovaldi. That’s 1%. Not the. That’s 1% of what it costs for the Balm in Gilead. Baby baby baby baby Babylon. By the river baby lay me down down Babylon chaunt. Gilead can blunt criticism concerning 91/half/less/millions. Less t…
Black Soundscapes White Stages
Black Soundscapes White Stages is a revelatory drumroll, summoning us to the fruitful intersections of musicology, Francophone and Creolophone literature, and cinema studies. Hill's work on neglected artists and cultural producers including poet Léon Gontran Damas and biguine singer Léona Gabriel, and his insightful readings of the vexed figure of the doudou make indispensible contributions to Francophone studies. The book's chapters are arranged…
“Soul to Soul”
Drawing on the metaphor of echo-location, this chapter considers the ‘Black Atlantic’ as constituted by the historical and memorializing narratives of the Middle Passage. The chapter discusses how Aidoo, Anyidoho and.Opoku-Agyemang engage with African Americans residing in/visiting Ghana and address traumatic legacies of slavery. The chapter compares the vision of diaspora in work by these Ghanaian writers with the documentary of Soul to Soul, a …
Pirates Choice
The sixth chapter shows how new technologies have given rise to a set of practices that pirate, informalize and distribute the sonic archives of transnational black solidarity traced throughout the book, potentially opening participation in pan-African imaginaries to new subjects. Beginning by examining pirated audio technologies in two Senegalese films, Camp de Thiaroye (1987) and Ça Twiste àò Poponguine (1992), the chapter notes how nostalgic e…
Négritude Musicology
This chapter integrates a close reading of Léopold Sédar Senghor’s writings on jazz with a study of the 1966 World Festival of Negro Arts, which Senghor envisioned as an actualization of negritude and what he called “the black soul.” Beginning with his earliest speeches in the 1930s, the chapter shows that the recurrent metaphors of jazz in his work reveal a transnational dimension to Senghorian nègritude sometimes eclipsed by his traditionalism.…
Symbiopsychotaxiplasticity
This paper puts African-American film-maker William Greaves's two films Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1971) and Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 21⁄2 (2003) in conversation with each other to consider the possibilities for self-reflexive improvization at two distinct moments, influenced by historical context, medium and generation. Using film footage shot in 1968 (with additional video footage shot with a new crew and returning cast members in Take…
Africa in Stereo
In Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music, and Pan-African Solidarity, Tsitsi Ella Jaji explores the complex relationship between musical modernism and Pan-Africanism in the twentieth century. Challenging the conventional narrative of modernism as a primarily Euro-American phenomenon, Jaji argues that African and diasporic artists engaged with modernist aesthetics to forge new sonic expressions of black identity and political consciousness. The book …
Re-collecting the Musical Politics of John and Nokutela Dube
On the occasion of the ANC’s centenary this article analyzes the musical contributions of founding president, John Langalibalele Dube and his first wife, Nokutela Dube. Through an analysis of the sonic metaphors the Dubes used in their speeches and letter-writing I show that the idea of transcribing music was essential to imagining freedom, modernity, and a relation to transnational black struggles. Close readings of their collection of secular s…
"Reflections on Performing Ben Patterson's "Paper Piece
Reflections on Performing Ben Patterson’s “Paper Piece” Tsitsi Jaji (bio) Late in the summer of 2011, George Lewis sent an essay to the members of the “Music as Translation” panel entitled “In Search of Ben Patterson.” A meditation on his long-standing interest in this composer, classical double bassist, arts organizer, and one of the few black members of the Fluxus movement, George’s piece arrived, as most things do these days, electronically, a…
Document for U.S. Citizens Who Have Never Applied for a Visa and Have Just About Had It with These Aliens Who Go On and On about Some Letter; Deep English; and Autumn Leaves (3 Poems)
InTensions is an interdisciplinary peer reviewed e-journal published biannually out of Fine Arts Cultural Studies at York University. This initiative brings together interventions by scholars and artists whose work deals with the theatricality of power, corporealities of structural violence, and sensory regimes.
Bulletproof
Sound Effects
Research Article| January 01 2009 Sound Effects: Synaesthesia As Purposeful Distortion In Keorapetse Kgositsile's Poetry Tsitsi Jaji Tsitsi Jaji Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Literature Studies (2009) 46 (2): 287–310. https://doi.org/10.2307/25659717 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Tsitsi Jaji; Sound Effects: Synaesthesia As Purposeful Distortion In Keorapetse Kgosi…
Africa in Stereo
In Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music, and Pan-African Solidarity, Tsitsi Ella Jaji explores the complex relationship between musical modernism and Pan-Africanism in the twentieth century. Challenging the conventional narrative of modernism as a primarily Euro-American phenomenon, Jaji argues that African and diasporic artists engaged with modernist aesthetics to forge new sonic expressions of black identity and political consciousness. The book …
Introduction
In this introduction to this special issue, “Genre and Africa,” Jaji and Saint theorize genre from the perspective of the African continent to explore how such an orientation necessarily interrogates and transforms previous understandings of genre. After a brief review of pivotal work in genre studies, the authors turn to Africa’s particular colonial and postcolonial predicaments to theorize the specific interventions to genre theory that such a …
Zimbabwe in Verse
The study of Anglophone African literature has predominantly focused on fiction, and primarily the novel form. Drama's relation to orature and to indigenous performance histories has made it a similarly significant form for African literature. Poetry, however, has received less attention, with most studies focusing on single-authored works. This article proposes an alternative approach, focusing not simply on individual poems or the corpus of ind…
Fan mail
Ngugi
Sound Effects
Research Article| January 01 2009 Sound Effects: Synaesthesia As Purposeful Distortion In Keorapetse Kgositsile's Poetry Tsitsi Jaji Tsitsi Jaji Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Literature Studies (2009) 46 (2): 287–310. https://doi.org/10.2307/25659717 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Tsitsi Jaji; Sound Effects: Synaesthesia As Purposeful Distortion In Keorapetse Kgosi…
Bulletproof
Document for U.S. Citizens Who Have Never Applied for a Visa and Have Just About Had It with These Aliens Who Go On and On about Some Letter; Deep English; and Autumn Leaves (3 Poems)
InTensions is an interdisciplinary peer reviewed e-journal published biannually out of Fine Arts Cultural Studies at York University. This initiative brings together interventions by scholars and artists whose work deals with the theatricality of power, corporealities of structural violence, and sensory regimes.
Re-collecting the Musical Politics of John and Nokutela Dube
On the occasion of the ANC’s centenary this article analyzes the musical contributions of founding president, John Langalibalele Dube and his first wife, Nokutela Dube. Through an analysis of the sonic metaphors the Dubes used in their speeches and letter-writing I show that the idea of transcribing music was essential to imagining freedom, modernity, and a relation to transnational black struggles. Close readings of their collection of secular s…
"Reflections on Performing Ben Patterson's "Paper Piece
Reflections on Performing Ben Patterson’s “Paper Piece” Tsitsi Jaji (bio) Late in the summer of 2011, George Lewis sent an essay to the members of the “Music as Translation” panel entitled “In Search of Ben Patterson.” A meditation on his long-standing interest in this composer, classical double bassist, arts organizer, and one of the few black members of the Fluxus movement, George’s piece arrived, as most things do these days, electronically, a…
“Soul to Soul”
Drawing on the metaphor of echo-location, this chapter considers the ‘Black Atlantic’ as constituted by the historical and memorializing narratives of the Middle Passage. The chapter discusses how Aidoo, Anyidoho and.Opoku-Agyemang engage with African Americans residing in/visiting Ghana and address traumatic legacies of slavery. The chapter compares the vision of diaspora in work by these Ghanaian writers with the documentary of Soul to Soul, a …
Pirates Choice
The sixth chapter shows how new technologies have given rise to a set of practices that pirate, informalize and distribute the sonic archives of transnational black solidarity traced throughout the book, potentially opening participation in pan-African imaginaries to new subjects. Beginning by examining pirated audio technologies in two Senegalese films, Camp de Thiaroye (1987) and Ça Twiste àò Poponguine (1992), the chapter notes how nostalgic e…
Négritude Musicology
This chapter integrates a close reading of Léopold Sédar Senghor’s writings on jazz with a study of the 1966 World Festival of Negro Arts, which Senghor envisioned as an actualization of negritude and what he called “the black soul.” Beginning with his earliest speeches in the 1930s, the chapter shows that the recurrent metaphors of jazz in his work reveal a transnational dimension to Senghorian nègritude sometimes eclipsed by his traditionalism.…
Symbiopsychotaxiplasticity
This paper puts African-American film-maker William Greaves's two films Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1971) and Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 21⁄2 (2003) in conversation with each other to consider the possibilities for self-reflexive improvization at two distinct moments, influenced by historical context, medium and generation. Using film footage shot in 1968 (with additional video footage shot with a new crew and returning cast members in Take…
Africa in Stereo
In Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music, and Pan-African Solidarity, Tsitsi Ella Jaji explores the complex relationship between musical modernism and Pan-Africanism in the twentieth century. Challenging the conventional narrative of modernism as a primarily Euro-American phenomenon, Jaji argues that African and diasporic artists engaged with modernist aesthetics to forge new sonic expressions of black identity and political consciousness. The book …
Black Soundscapes White Stages
Black Soundscapes White Stages is a revelatory drumroll, summoning us to the fruitful intersections of musicology, Francophone and Creolophone literature, and cinema studies. Hill's work on neglected artists and cultural producers including poet Léon Gontran Damas and biguine singer Léona Gabriel, and his insightful readings of the vexed figure of the doudou make indispensible contributions to Francophone studies. The book's chapters are arranged…
Poetry
The balm served up in Gilead will heal will shrink will shrug off the losses. Profit made elsewhere means that $300 for a bottle of the pills in India/ Less for improv. Hep cats could lay it on ya ... $10 a day or less for Sovaldi. That’s 1%. Not the. That’s 1% of what it costs for the Balm in Gilead. Baby baby baby baby Babylon. By the river baby lay me down down Babylon chaunt. Gilead can blunt criticism concerning 91/half/less/millions. Less t…
Introduction
In this introduction to this special issue, “Genre and Africa,” Jaji and Saint theorize genre from the perspective of the African continent to explore how such an orientation necessarily interrogates and transforms previous understandings of genre. After a brief review of pivotal work in genre studies, the authors turn to Africa’s particular colonial and postcolonial predicaments to theorize the specific interventions to genre theory that such a …
Bingo Magazine in the Age of Pan-African Festivals
The large-scale Pan-African festivals held in Senegal, Algeria, and Nigeria (1966–77) are recognized as central to forging a transnational repertoire of cultural practices and memories that are the bedrock of a post-independence global black consciousness. Nevertheless, such festivals necessarily privileged certain artists and cultural workers with the means and/or governmental and United Nations support to travel. During the same era, popular pr…
Fan mail
Ngugi
Within Earshot of Africa-Meditations on The Sound of Culture
This essay takes its cue from Louis Chude-Sokei’s The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics. Chude-Sokei’s specific Caribbean matrix of technologically oriented poetics of the human is extended to African and African American texts, illustrating how blackness registers across distinctive histories. Following Chude-Sokei’s engagement with Sylvia Wynter, the essay begins with the centrality of women’s engagements with technologies for …
And They Didn't Die
for my mother, who has done all things wellI bring a squall of quiet, my hectoring force, to shamethe belated fog of orders and bandages into a fine mist.I am here to squelch reason’s panic. Certaintyis scrambled and we find only Vaseline, thick with scent,and too heavy to churn the waters. If they wept no tearsthey would not know I will not shed any.If there were no tremors they would not know me. Unshaken.I will outlive them. I will bury them i…
Introduction
In any culture, festive events are often far more than simple opportunities to feast and celebrate. They can also be focal points for political or cultural movements, a chance to speak and act in ways that may be forbidden or limited in non-festive times. In the Caribbean, with its particular history of slavery and cross-cultural encounter, festivities were often highly policed, explosive points in the calendar. Slave dances were breaks in the re…
Zimbabwe in Verse
The study of Anglophone African literature has predominantly focused on fiction, and primarily the novel form. Drama's relation to orature and to indigenous performance histories has made it a similarly significant form for African literature. Poetry, however, has received less attention, with most studies focusing on single-authored works. This article proposes an alternative approach, focusing not simply on individual poems or the corpus of ind…
Baba's Voice Mail
baba's voice mail. Tsitsi Jaji (bio) apple is unable to transcribebaba's naturalized speech. out of Africa' s lion's den he strides, to brave each stare. npr says 40% of americacannot read. others don'treally know what the fourth means, what spell it casts.which flags forged,what oath sworn. this elderly black malekeeps driving.an elderly white female, amai,steers him. a wrong turnor sudden brake wouldlaunder them,as in, shit,they'd lose the litt…
Other Libraries
Poems by Tsitsi Jaji
I. At Independence Hall In the amber light, the heat bottoms out below ground level. This khaki-clad woman guidesus: one day, she says, we will all look back on fossil fuels the same way
The Cambridge Companion to the Poem
What is a poem? What ideas about the poem as such shape how readers and audiences encounter individual poems? To explore these questions, the first section of this Companion addresses key conceptual issues, from singularity and genre to the poem's historical exchanges with the song and the novel. The second section turns to issues of form, focusing on voice, rhythm, image, sound, diction, and style. The third section considers the poem's social a…
A Tribute in Verse (Benediction and Translation)
This contribution includes an original poem, “Benediction” in tribute of Valentin-Yves Mudimbe and the first translation in English of selections from Les Fuseaux, parfois (1974). Mudimbe authored several collections in the 1970s, and this translation is intended to draw more scholarly attention to his poetic output
Art (19 works) · History (18 works) · Literature (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Political science (11 works) · African history and culture studies (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Art history (9 works) · Media studies (9 works) · Politics (9 works)