Imiphindo kwaXhosa

Xa sithetha ngemigobo/imigoqo, sithetha ngantoni? Sigoba ntoni? Kuvele ntoni? What is bent when we speak of imigoqo? What surfaces when we turn, twist, or fold? This episode dwells in the curves and contours of isiXhosa life—its gestures, refusals, rituals, and dress codes. Through sound, memory, and movement, we enter the layered world of imiphindo, where the fold is not only a form but a practic...

On 25 August 2023, the UN/FOLDING_RE/FOLDING_FOLDED: Imiphindo kwaXhosa production team returned kuGatyana to host a listening session with the podcast’s co-authors and their community. What began as a simple gesture of return became a deeply felt gathering — an act of sonic repair and collective affirmation. The day reminded us that the most powerful forms of cultural work are not just heard, but...

In this episode, we spend time with uAzola Krweqe, a curator and visual practitioner whose work spans Cape Town and her paternal home in Nkanga, Willowvale. Through her photographic inquiries, Azola explores how her subjects choose to be seen, inviting us to consider the power and freedom inherent in visibility. Her return home has nurtured a deepening relationship with her culture and ancestral p...

The Willowvale Arts Center is a creative hub located onthe outskirts of the remote town of Willowvale. Established in 2008 by the Department of Sports, Arts and culture, the uniquely designed building is the host site for creatives kuGatyana (Willowvale) and Mbhashe Municipality at large, where many come to learn about and explore innovative methods that can aid them in growing in the local creati...

What do the slippages of fashion look like? What happens to the voids that form between urban and rural, past and present, individual and communal? In this episode, we explore the folds and fissures in fashion’s fabric — where languages, locations, and aesthetics intersect and fold into one another, revealing alternative fashion knowledges and new genealogies that resist singular narratives. Guide...

Umbhinqo: Kubhinqa abatheni xa kutheni? Narrated by uMama Makholi, a revered maker at the Willowvale Arts Center, this episode brings us into the intricate folds of Xhosa dress practices—specifically umbhinqo and isishuba. With clarity and care, she details which folds adorn which body and for what occasion. Often associated with the feminine form, umbhinqo—the act of wrapping cloth around the bod...

Yonke into iyathetha. Netsimbi le iyathetha. This episode honours beadwork not simply as adornment, but as archive—a living, breathing language held in colour, thread, and form. We walk alongside uMama Nokhaya Jilingisa, a revered community elder and everyday knowledge-keeper, whose lifelong commitment to iintsimbi reveals how Xhosa epistemologies are preserved and passed through the hands of wome...

What can creative practice offer a displaced spirit? How might making—through word, thread, voice, or movement—become a ritual of return? This interlude opens a soft space for pause and reflection. Through sonic fragments and field recordings, we begin to sense how creative work can function as ukubuyisa—a calling back of the self to place, memory, and community. For Black artists navigating dislo...

In this episode, we take up clothing as language—as a material vocabulary that speaks across generations. Guided by community elders and local Makers at the Willowvale Arts Center, we enter a space of listening and learning, where dress becomes a form of respect, relation, and remembrance. Sitting with the women of the Co-op, we become students in a place of deep knowledge. KuGatyana, we are remin...

A bridge. A break. A spiral. This episode unfolds as a reflexive interlude—a moment of return and resonance. SONGA dwells in the sonic and poetic textures of isiXhosa, circling around the language of folds and the folding of language itself. Through the repetition of root sounds, phrases, and gestures, the episode becomes a kind of oral incantation—folding and unfolding the word songa until it bec...

This episode marks a shift—from gathering and observing, to sensing and becoming. We begin to see how the folds of Xhosa dress and ritual are not merely symbolic, but pedagogical: they teach, they mark, they hold. Through a return to ritual space, our host meets the fabric of her own inheritance—not as a distant object of study, but as a living archive folded into the body. What emerges is a cross...

“Imnyama ibenomgca omhlophe.” In this textured episode, we are guided by uTat’ Mangaliso Jafta—community elder, social entrepreneur, and former MK operative—who walks with us through the streets of Willowvale, kuGatyana. As co-host and conversational anchor, uTat’ Jafta opens a thread that is both personal and political, inviting us to consider how dress codes such as iqhiya carry historical, soci...

UN/FOLDING_RE/FOLDING_FOLDED: Imiphindo kwaXhosa What do we carry when we move through rites of passage? What dresses us, not only in fabric, but in responsibility, presence, and belonging? In Uhambo, Siviwe James begins her journey into imiphindo—the folds of Xhosa dress, memory, and becoming. This first episode listens closely to the work of clothing in ceremonial life: how garments signal shift...