About Afro No-Clash:

Afro No-Clash is my current album and it contains eleven compositions performed by a variety of groups including Kabombo Kombo, The Esplanados, Topology, The String Quartet of the Southern Hemisphere and Quinte Bentos. This site contains information about the album and the research that I did to compose it. You can listen to the tracks, order the album, read the lyrics, read some of the story behind the music or even read the PhD that I wrote about composing the music (not for the faint of heart).

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Afro No-Clash (the short story)

In 1994, just after Nelson mandela was elected a president, I went to South Africa. I ended up living there for most of the following six years, and I spent lots of time playing, teaching and learning music. I got really deeply involved in understanding traditional music from the Xhosa, Zulu and Mpondo language groups and wrote and recorded a documerntary series which was produced by ABC Radio National in 1999.

I spent a lot of time playing and listening to music in South Africa and was very keen to understand how to these African influences with pop, rock and jazz music of my background. In 2002 I was back in Australia, teaching music at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, and I applied for a was offered a scholarship to do a PhD in music.

This was the perfect opportunity to compose and analyse the music and develop my compositional language. I spent from 2005-2007 writing, recording and analysing ways to blend styles across Africa and the West. The result of this labour of love is this album, and the written research document, called an exegesis.

(Thats the very short version- the long version is here)