Kgafela oa Magogodi

Kgafela oa Magogodi (19**–)

Kgafela oa Magogodi is a South African* stand-up poet, storyteller, essayist, spoken word theatre director, and film scholar. He is also known as a Kwai-Jazz poet. He holds a Master's degree in Dramatic Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand and has studied African Literature. He has taught and lectured at several institutions, including the University of the North West (Mafikeng Campus), where he lectured in the English Department, and the Wits School of Dramatic Arts, where he served as a part-time lecturer in African Cinema and Oral Performance and Rap/Dub Poetry Studies.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and performance

Magogodi's spoken word career has taken him to stages across Southern Africa and around the world. He has designed and facilitated spoken word workshops through various institutions over many years. He worked with the Wits School of Dramatic Arts and served as a visiting professor at the TISCH School of Arts, New York University, where he collaborated with students to produce experimental theatre pieces, among them Bread, War, Blood. He later directed a spoken word theatre piece, Traaibek, with students at the University of the North West.

His self-published poetry pamphlets are Untamed Lovelines (1996), Love Thighs Lies (1997), and Book of Revelashinz (1998). His poetry has appeared in magazines and literary journals, and was included in Poetry International: Special Double Issue Featuring English Language Poetry from around the World (2003–4). Essays on film by Magogodi appear in Theatre Research International (Vol. 27, no. 3, 2002, pp. 243–258), and in Balseiro, I. and Malisela, N. (eds) To Change Reels: Film and Film Culture in South Africa (Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 2003).

As a screenwriter, he wrote the short film script Yeoville Blues & Valentines (1997) and co-wrote the feature film script Shoot First Laugh Last (1998)*. He is co-producer and writer of the spoken word film I Mike What I Like, directed by Jyoti Mistry, which has screened at numerous international film festivals. The video poem Itchy City, drawn from that film, was showcased in Afropolis, an exhibition on African megacities held at the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, Cologne, in 2010.

His spoken word and music album Bua Fela was released in 2008, and he subsequently led the band Kgafela le Marabele in work towards a further album, Marabele Republic*. Music from Bua Fela received airplay on radio stations and in jazz clubs in South Africa.

In June 2009 Magogodi participated in the tenth Poesie Festival Berlin, where a selection of his recent poetry was translated into German and published in the festival anthology Weltlang Nacht Die Poesie.