Of Song and Soul

The San people are considered to be the closest living relatives to early humans in southern Africa and have been in present-day Botswana for at least 25,000 years. They historically lived in hunter-gatherer societies in the Kalahari region, though today they have become the most marginalized group in southern Africa and face many modern challenges, such as loss of land and traditional practices and lack of educational and economic opportunities. Outsiders have deemed their traditional way of life worthy of protecting, often forcing them to remain “relics” of early hunter-gatherer societies and exoticizing them through ethnotourism.

Alfred Cg’ase Tshumu, who goes by his self-given name “Alphynho,” is a young San man from D’kar, a community west of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, determined to use his entrepreneurial energy to not only launch his dream of becoming a musician but to create new vehicles to refashion the identity of his people.

Produced in 2018 for MA Thesis at The University of Texas at Austin.