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So deep has been Eugene Skeef's influence in English popular culture that he is now a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and has also performed at Buckingham Palace and was presented to Queen Elizabeth II as part of Music Theme Day to celebrate the diversity of culture in Britain.
Now you can listen to him, first-hand, on his podcast, New Dawn.
The first time I came across the name Eugene Skeef was in the early 1980s through the pages of the Staffrider, the legendary literary journal that launched the careers of many now famous South African authors, including Njabulo S Ndebele, Chris van Wyk, Miriam Tlali and Gcina Mhlophe.
Skeef, who contributed poetry regularly to Staffrider, signed off as someone based in Marianridge, a township designated for so-called coloured people, which was not very far from my own township.
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As someone who was dabbling in poetry, I was so moved by his work that spoke of the realities of township life that I hoped our paths would cross one day.
As fate would have it, our paths did finally cross, almost 30 years later. This was in 2011, in London. Also present during that beautifully evocative encounter were the poet and academic Keorapetse "Bra Willy" Kgositsile and my good friend Siphiwo Mahala, the academic and novelist.
When I told Skeef how much I had admired his writing while I was still in high school, and how disappointed I was when he had suddenly disappeared from the scene, he told me what had happened.
After constant harassment from the apartheid Security Branch, he fled into exile, settling in England.
A gifted percussionist and singer, he made a precarious living busking in London, and finally got a firm footing when he started working with the likes of Bheki Mseleku, the pianist originally from Lamontville in KwaZulu-Natal.
Later, he collaborated with Anthony Tidd, Brian Eno, Tunde Jegede and Eddie Parker.
He worked hard at being recognised – on his own terms, one might add – by the mainstream in the UK, finally getting opportunities to be involved in the development of the education programmes of some of the major classical orchestras in the UK, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
In March 2005 he performed with his Abantu Ensemble at Buckingham Palace and was presented to Queen Elizabeth II as part of the historic Music Day to celebrate the diversity of culture in Britain.
In the winter of 2006, Skeef was awarded an Arts Council England fellowship to the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada to spend three months developing In Memory of Our Seasons, a multimedia commission from the London Sinfonietta.
In June 2006, SoundJunction – of which Skeef was content producer, author and advisor – won the prestigious New Media Age (NMA) award in the music category.
Skeef sits with Howard Goodall and Mary King on the judging panel of the BBC Choir of the Year competition. His choral work, Harmony, was performed at Westminster Abbey in March 2007 before the Queen and Commonwealth High Commissioners to promote global tolerance and understanding.
In 2007, Skeef directed Motherland, a dance theatre piece he created with an international cast in acknowledgment of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the Slave Trade Act.
In June 2008, Skeef and Richard Bissill’s Excite!, an orchestral commission by the LPO, premiered at the Royal Festival Hall at Southbank Centre, London.
In 2012, Skeef performed at Orchestra In A Field, a classical/popular music cross-over festival situated in Glastonbury Abbey, Somerset. The event was televised by Channel 4.
His debut poetry collection, In Search of My River, came out in 2020, a long overdue occasion for a person who has produced prodigious volumes of writing over so many years.
Considering his restless search for artistic voices to be heard, it is not surprising that Skeef has finally heeded the call to put his thoughts and words where many can access them, on various issues. I am talking about the podcast series that he launched this week in conjunction with writer Kwesi Owusu.
Called New Dawn, the podcast series will tackle everything from the nature of cultural work to sociopolitical issues that people on the continent and in the diaspora are grappling with. The launch episode of the podcast series is here.
*Additional information from Wikipedia
