UPRIZE!, the forthcoming album release by Johannesburg based ensemble SPAZA, was created during a three-day improvised scoring workshop in 2016. During these sessions, footage from an (at the time) unfinished documentary was projected in front of the musicians in the living room in which they were recording. The film, directed by Sifiso Khanyile, also called UPRIZE! and released in 2017, looks back at the Soweto uprising of June 1976.

Bassist Ariel Zamonsky, percussionist Gontse Makhene, pianist, trombone player and singer Malcolm Jiyane, and vocalist Nonku Phiri, responded to the snapshots of moving image with improvised performances, with the guidance of musical directors Nhlanhla Mngadi and Andrew Curnow.

“The 16 June protests stretched over several weeks in a countrywide blaze that turned out to be a sustained show of solidarity among students and an unbridled display of brutality by the state”, says the label. “The recording process mirrors that protraction, working out a new language with which to commemorate the death, darkness and defiance of those days.”

UPRIZE! is released by Mushroom Hour Half Hour on 16 October