As part of the curatorial project “7 Winds” at Kunsthalle Bern, the vocalist NoBuntu Mhlambi has been showing a two-part performance: “Ayiyiyo” and “Yiyo le”. This video shows excerpts from “Yiyo le”, performed in the exhibition “Bird Sound Orientations” by Rahima Gambo on August 19, 2022.

NoBuntu Mhlambi: Yiyo le / Kunsthalle Bern. Performance, August 19, 2022.

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Official description: “Ayiyiyo” and “Yiyo le” is a two-part performance by vocalist NoBuntu Mhlambi. It is an expression of a practice she named “Extended Vocal Techniques PSP (Prophetics, Stories & Poetics), inflected by the mingling of four giftings: singing / voice, prophetic insight, storytelling, and poetry. These will juxtapose and mediate the two movements of the composition addressing questions of artifice and genuinity. They are epilogued with a tributary re-imagination of a composition by an African woman composer active in the late 19th and early 20th century. 7 Winds is an open-ended curatorial project that started on March 4, 2022 and will end on May 28, 2023. The title derives from a story we once heard on the seven names given to winds in Senslerdeutsch, a Swiss German dialect: names that, together with the dialect itself, are gradually disappearing. 7 Winds will look at different aspects of languages, particularly the loss of concepts in vernacular languages and the implication of translation on meaning and feeling. Could we still feel a particular wind once we can no longer name it? The project was initiated by Kabelo Malatsie, who invited Camilla Paolino and Julia Künzi to join her.