Xa sithetha ngemigobo/imigoqo, sithetha ngantoni? Sigoba ntoni? Kuvele ntoni? What is bent when we speak of imigoqo? What surfaces when we turn, twist, or fold? This episode dwells in the curves and contours of isiXhosa life—its gestures, refusals, rituals, and dress codes. Through sound, memory, and movement, we enter the layered world of imiphindo, where the fold is not only a form but a practice of returning, refiguring, and refusing reduction. Here, isiXhosa is not translated—it is lived, vo...
May 20, 2025•35 sec
On 25 August 2023, the UN/FOLDING_RE/FOLDING_FOLDED: Imiphindo kwaXhosa production team returned kuGatyana to host a listening session with the podcast’s co-authors and their community. What began as a simple gesture of return became a deeply felt gathering — an act of sonic repair and collective affirmation. The day reminded us that the most powerful forms of cultural work are not just heard, but held, felt, and shared. Guided by Willowvale Arts Center (W.A.C) Manager Lukhanyo Muluse and curato...
Dec 06, 2023•2 min•Season 1Ep. 11
In this episode, we spend time with uAzola Krweqe, a curator and visual practitioner whose work spans Cape Town and her paternal home in Nkanga, Willowvale. Through her photographic inquiries, Azola explores how her subjects choose to be seen, inviting us to consider the power and freedom inherent in visibility. Her return home has nurtured a deepening relationship with her culture and ancestral practices—connections often obscured when living in urban spaces. Through Azola’s personal story, we ...
Oct 09, 2023•9 min•Season 1Ep. 10
The Willowvale Arts Center is a creative hub located onthe outskirts of the remote town of Willowvale. Established in 2008 by the Department of Sports, Arts and culture, the uniquely designed building is the host site for creatives kuGatyana (Willowvale) and Mbhashe Municipality at large, where many come to learn about and explore innovative methods that can aid them in growing in the local creative economy in the Eastern Cape. The center (W.A.C) functions as an inclusive space for the community...
Oct 09, 2023•3 min•Season 1Ep. 9
What do the slippages of fashion look like? What happens to the voids that form between urban and rural, past and present, individual and communal? In this episode, we explore the folds and fissures in fashion’s fabric — where languages, locations, and aesthetics intersect and fold into one another, revealing alternative fashion knowledges and new genealogies that resist singular narratives. Guided by Ms Nobuhle James, an advisor of isiXhosa in the Eastern Cape and a teacher for the unknowing an...
Sep 29, 2023•14 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Umbhinqo: Kubhinqa abatheni xa kutheni? Narrated by uMama Makholi, a revered maker at the Willowvale Arts Center, this episode brings us into the intricate folds of Xhosa dress practices—specifically umbhinqo and isishuba. With clarity and care, she details which folds adorn which body and for what occasion. Often associated with the feminine form, umbhinqo—the act of wrapping cloth around the body—extends far beyond gender. It is an embodied gesture of respect, a practice of reverence toward an...
Sep 24, 2023•5 min•Season 1Ep. 7
Yonke into iyathetha. Netsimbi le iyathetha. This episode honours beadwork not simply as adornment, but as archive—a living, breathing language held in colour, thread, and form. We walk alongside uMama Nokhaya Jilingisa, a revered community elder and everyday knowledge-keeper, whose lifelong commitment to iintsimbi reveals how Xhosa epistemologies are preserved and passed through the hands of women, through the rigour of practice, and through the act of teaching. As a cultural educator and mento...
Sep 17, 2023•8 min•Season 1Ep. 6
What can creative practice offer a displaced spirit? How might making—through word, thread, voice, or movement—become a ritual of return? This interlude opens a soft space for pause and reflection. Through sonic fragments and field recordings, we begin to sense how creative work can function as ukubuyisa—a calling back of the self to place, memory, and community. For Black artists navigating dislocation, silence, or loss, imiphindo ephilisayo suggests that the fold can be medicinal: a site of re...
Sep 17, 2023•2 min•Season 1Ep. 5
In this episode, we take up clothing as language—as a material vocabulary that speaks across generations. Guided by community elders and local Makers at the Willowvale Arts Center, we enter a space of listening and learning, where dress becomes a form of respect, relation, and remembrance. Sitting with the women of the Co-op, we become students in a place of deep knowledge. KuGatyana, we are reminded of isihlonipho—the ways of reverence—and how isinxibo (Xhosa dress) is never merely decorative. ...
Sep 10, 2023•8 min•Season 1Ep. 4
A bridge. A break. A spiral. This episode unfolds as a reflexive interlude—a moment of return and resonance. SONGA dwells in the sonic and poetic textures of isiXhosa, circling around the language of folds and the folding of language itself. Through the repetition of root sounds, phrases, and gestures, the episode becomes a kind of oral incantation—folding and unfolding the word songa until it becomes both action and atmosphere. Rather than explaining, this episode performs—letting the act of fo...
Sep 10, 2023•39 sec
This episode marks a shift—from gathering and observing, to sensing and becoming. We begin to see how the folds of Xhosa dress and ritual are not merely symbolic, but pedagogical: they teach, they mark, they hold. Through a return to ritual space, our host meets the fabric of her own inheritance—not as a distant object of study, but as a living archive folded into the body. What emerges is a crossroads where personal becoming meets ancestral instruction. The Xhosa fold reveals itself not only in...
Sep 09, 2023•3 min•Season 1Ep. 3
“Imnyama ibenomgca omhlophe.” In this textured episode, we are guided by uTat’ Mangaliso Jafta—community elder, social entrepreneur, and former MK operative—who walks with us through the streets of Willowvale, kuGatyana. As co-host and conversational anchor, uTat’ Jafta opens a thread that is both personal and political, inviting us to consider how dress codes such as iqhiya carry historical, social, and spiritual meaning across generations. Our inquiry begins with a simple provocation: ukhule w...
Sep 08, 2023•11 min•Season 1Ep. 2
UN/FOLDING_RE/FOLDING_FOLDED: Imiphindo kwaXhosa What do we carry when we move through rites of passage? What dresses us, not only in fabric, but in responsibility, presence, and belonging? In Uhambo, Siviwe James begins her journey into imiphindo—the folds of Xhosa dress, memory, and becoming. This first episode listens closely to the work of clothing in ceremonial life: how garments signal shifts in status, how the body becomes a site of transition, and how wearers are re-made through isinxibo...
Sep 08, 2023•5 min•Season 1Ep. 1
