Sonic selves, ancestral archives: Identity, language and cultural memory in amaXhosa sacred practice

Abstract

Among the amaXhosa of South Africa’s Eastern Cape, knowledge lives less in texts than in bodies, voices and sacred landscapes. In Hamburg, at the mouth of the Keiskamma River, knowledge of the ocean, river, forest and healing plants is transmitted in isiXhosa through song, carried by elders whose authority rests on accountability to the ancestors rather than institutional credentials. This article examines how amaXhosa sacred spaces function as living archives where language, music and cosmology converge to form identity, sustain memory and enact healing. It draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Hamburg (2022–2024): (1) semi-structured interviews with 30 community members (25 analysed), (2) participant observation and (3) cultural immersion. Narratives were examined ecomusicologically through narrative analysis and ritual and folklore songs, framed by literature on African Indigenous Knowledge Systems, decolonial methodology, memory studies and sonic epistemologies. Findings show that the river, coast and grove known as Nyulutsi operate as active archives; that identity formation is inseparable from sonic performance, making the politics of language inseparable from the politics of sound; that songs, chants and clan-call protocols form an irreplaceable but generationally strained transmission system; and that healing, memory and resilience are enacted sonically and remain place-bound. The article proposes the Sonic Living Archive as a theoretical contribution, arguing that decolonising knowledge requires recognising sonic and oral forms of knowing as legitimate archives. Contribution: The article shows how amaXhosa sacred sonic practices offer epistemological and pedagogical frameworks for re-centring African knowledge in research and teaching, contributing to debates on higher education transformation.