Sarah Nuttall is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, editor of
This chapter explores the soundworld of Penny Siopis’s film works, taking its cue from her engagement with the life and music of August Musarurwa in Welcome Visitors! As a saxophonist and bandleader in 1950s Bulawayo (then in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe), Musarurwa wrote “Skokiaan,” a hit record subsequently covered by Louis Armstrong. By tracing the transnational, transcultural saga of this African/American pop song (and also Armstrong’s travels in Ghana, Congo, and Rhodesia), the chapter explores how Siopis unsettles the idea of a soundtrack. Rather than providing an underscore that confirms and guides a single emotional response, the sound channel in her films blurs any notion of an appropriate affective register; it also poses the question of what to do with the sentiment and nostalgia that music can automatically, perhaps fraudulently, release. With detours via Turkish and Greek folksongs, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and the life of Demitrios Tsafendas, the conclusion is that the sonic texture of Siopis’s films amplifies the strangeness of the past and its subjects rather than rendering them too easily audible or knowable.
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