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"Sound, Spirit, Struggle: Du Bois and South Africa"

I come from a place and came up in a time where the work of black sonic and aural traditions are vital to the continued work of resistance in struggles toward liberation. South Africa’s history and present is rich in constant return to the concrete ways in which sound can move struggle beyond concept, into practice. Spirit, the abstraction of our constant strain to achieve liberation and transcendence, becomes material and tactile, in my argument, through the work of sound. In this talk I audit the ways in which Du Bois’s correspondences with South African struggle and sonic icons, Charlotte Maxeke and Sol Plaatje, reflect the depth of his commitment to the relational work of sound and resistance struggle in his own political and philosophical imaginary. This talk, in part a communal listening session, is a chance to think aloud about the work of sound in the continued efforts of people of South Africa in our anticolonial, antigenocidal, antiapartheid, and anticapitalist struggle.

Bio

Wilton Schereka is a scholar, archivist, activist, and writer from Cape Town, South Africa. He has two MA degrees- one from the University of the Western Cape in History on questions of blackness, Afrofuturism, and black electronic music. The second is from Brown University in Africana studies. He is in the final stages of his PhD at the University of the Western Cape on the work of struggle song and sound in the history of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. As archivist, Wilton has worked in the archives of the District Six Museum in Cape Town. In 2025 he was awarded a Graduate Fellowship at the W. E. B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst.

"This event is the first expression of the new partnership between the W. E. B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst (Amherst, Massachusetts) and the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape (Cape Town, South Africa)." 

Location: W. E. B. Du Bois Library, Floor 22, Room 2220, Du Bois Center