This project is called train-ophone. A made up word to express my interest in the musicality of the train within the context of the New York city subway and the South African railway. I am interested in the train’s historic relationship to black oppression, and inversely how black diaspora have confronted this oppression, utilizing the train as an instrument for wild liberation practices. This obsession was sparked from a fleeting moment in the film, A Brother with Perfect Timing, where South African Jazz artist Abdullah Ibrahim walks slowly towards the camera away from his train station at 23rd st in Chelsea. This small moment created an imaginary story in my mind about Abdullah’s daily commute on the train and its possible similarities to my own experiences in this same raw space. As he took the train in exile from his home, I wondered what he pondered as the train screeched and hummed. I expressed these narratives in a soundscape, titled Bombela reprise, that describes these atmospheres, conditions, and stories that coagulate in the space of the train. This soundscape was produced by gathering hours of field recordings on train stations in South Africa and New York, stories from digital and analog interviews, and songs from Abdullah Ibrahim, and various anonymous busking musicians on the New York subway. This all to express my core value of this project, to be wild, is to be free, this is what the train provides. A platform for liberation, a rail for spontaneity, a choreography of bodies laboring, dancing, thinking, fighting, and existing. For some people the train is a way out, for me it’s a way in.
