Echoes of Southern African liberation struggles

Echoes of Southern African liberation struggles is a podcast that explores sounds, interviews, music, and even noises recorded during the Southern African independence era in Swiss journalism archives. Over five episodes, journalists, artists, and researchers present mixtapes that reconsider archival recordings and reflect on their meanings in the present moment.

In each episode of the podcast "Echoes of Southern African liberation struggles," an invited collaborator presents a mixtape made with archival recordings from Swiss journalism archives, as well as recordings from personal collections or newly created ones, to reflect on the southern African liberation struggle and the meanings of these recordings in the present moment. Each mixtape is followed by a conversation in which collaborators reflect on their practice, their experiences of listening to the archival recordings and how sound features in their work, and share their thoughts about the challenges and responsibilities resulting from the fact that important sound archives concerned with the Southern African independence era located far away from the region, in Switzerland.

In the first episode, Melanie Boehi provides an overview of the collaborative research project "Echoes of the Southern African independence era in Swiss journalism archives" of which this podcast is a part. She talks about audio recordings made during the Southern African liberation period kept in Swiss journalism archives, in particular the Ruth Weiss Sound Archives at the Basler Afrika Bibliographien, and presents the southern African collaborators who created mixtapes for the following episodes.