Photographing Xhosa Shamans in South Africa

Shaman healers who practice traditional medicine and worship the ancestors are influential figures in South African communities. Traditional healers fulfill different social and political roles in the community, including divination, healing physical, emotional and spiritual illnesses, directing birth or death rituals, finding lost cattle, protecting warriors, counteracting witchcraft, and narrating the history, cosmology, and concepts of their tradition. But what fascinated Italian photographer Tommaso Fiscaletti wasn't their power, but the contrast between that and their everyday lives.

Fiscaletti has been based in Cape Town for the past two and a half years, and first set foot in the small township of Dunoon, in the west of the city, when he was introduced to the urban weavers who live there.
 

The women invited him to come to learn about their designs, but Fiscaletti was struck by the duality of the spiritual and the domestic that shape their lives.
 

He had soon embarked upon a six-month project photographing them, taking shots he's titled Between Home and Wisdom.
 

"On the one hand, they are leading figures for the community and the family and on the other, they're devoted to the cult of the ancestors and spend a lot of time alone," Fiscaletti says.
 

"What attracted me the most was the energy of these women in everyday life, in the context of the township where nature seems to have changed its shape, and life and death seem to have a different feeling to normal reality."
 

Through a combination of staged, cinematic portraits where dramatic lighting illuminates the women in their dark surroundings, and photographs taken against neutral backgrounds, Fiscaletti frames the strong characters of his subjects, focusing on them rather than their social conditions.
 

"My vision, and my approach to the image, has been conditioned by the love for the cinema," he says. See more of Tomasso's work here.

Abel Selaocoe: Shaman with a Cello

South African cellist Abel Selaocoe is redefining the parameters of the cello. He combines virtuosic performance with improvisation, singing and body percussion. Abel moves seamlessly across a plethora of genres and styles, from collaborations with world musicians and beatboxers, to concerto performances. But his solo shamanic performances are something else: he directs all his energy at communicating with the audience. He is both entertainer and minister, but he is also a healer, expanding the potential of his cello, and singing with a virtuosity that is never undermined by playing to the audience, gently coaxing them to sing along rather than resorting to the cliche of a hand-clapping accompaniment.

He has become a master of various pieces of digital equipment that enable him to create backing tracks--vocal, instrumental and percussive--with which he can play and sing along, as well as layering the sound by doubling voice and cello tracks. It comes close at times to being an over used gimmick, and yet, he knows just when to pull back from dependence upon the wonders of audio technology. In an instant, he will return to a masterful stroke of the cello's bow or a plaintive undulation of spine-chilling voice.

Selaocoe's resonant throat-singing is a wonder to behold, never just a display, but a way of conjuring the spirits of the ancestors he mentions in his introductions and invites into his performances. In a way that is common to so much African music, from the song of a bush village through to gospel, soul and rap. Selaocoe's show is not just superb entertainment, but also a form of teaching: his message is explicitly about love, community and healing. He brings all three of these essential qualities of humanity together in a way that leaves the audience uplifted and transformed. The wonder of Abel Selaocoe is that he can make any venue feel like a sacred gathering place. 

 

His debut album Where is Home? Hae Ke Kae on the subject of home and refuge was released in September 2022. It's dual title, in English and Sesotho, reflects the album's diverse program which draws from vibrant European and African influences: pieces inspired by South African and Tanzanian musical tradition share a space with works by J.S. Bach and Giovanni Benedetto Platti, some of which are renewed with instrumental and lyrical improvisations. The title of the album holds multifaceted significance for the Manchester-based musician: "Home is the place that empowers you; it's not only a geographical place but in people as well, where you can live a life of empowerment and not of oppression. I've learned to find my different homes through the cello." Abel Selaocoe represents Africa on the move.