San Musical Futures
Cultural labour and self-determination among San youth in Botswana
Introduction
San Musical Futures is a practice-based research project developed in dialogue with San youth and communities in Botswana. It brings together ethnographic research and collaborative audiovisual practice to explore how music and performance shape everyday life, dignity, and cultural continuity under conditions of ongoing marginalisation.
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The project is presented here through a series of ethnographic videos and a written doctoral dissertation. Together, they form a single body of research, approached through listening, duration, and attentiveness rather than extraction or spectacle.
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This website is designed as a point of entry into the work as a whole. It invites visitors to move through the project slowly, encountering voices, performances, and ideas as they unfold, and to engage with the research as an ongoing process rather than a finished account.
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The work presented here emerged from long-term engagement and remains open-ended by design.
