CHRIS THURMAN: Six strings and the truth
Guitarist Derek Gripper shares a sacred knowledge and skill, a glimpse of the collective human divine
So you’ve read Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and Frantz Fanon and Achille Mbembe. You’ve diligently been decolonising your mind for a while now (perhaps you even started before the advent of Fallism). It has been tough going, a grim journey between the wreckage of history and the where-we-are-now, redeemed by occasional revelations both major and minor. But it’s never exactly enjoyable.
Decolonising your ears, on the other hand, can be a truly joyful experience. I mean: changing the way you listen to music. For white semi-Westerners like me, it’s a process of learning to hear in a different way — beyond the narrow confines of the ways in which you’ve been conditioned to recognise notes and chords, melodies and harmonies. A process of unlearning, in fact...
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