At Stake’ and Other Love Songs

At Stake is a protest song about femicide, the history of violence against women, and violence against the marginalised queer people. At Stake is also a love song.

Msaki has been exploring the idea of the protest song as a love song with her project Platinumb Heart. She has been trialling these songs out in live performances over the last two years in order to reach creative and emotional conclusions about the musical arrangements and the questions that come with living in an #RIPwxmen nation.

Every year wxmen are faced with the same unbearably surreal questions asked in different ways: ‘Sifelani’?’, ‘Am I Next?’. In the absence of answers these songs have been Msaki’s attempt to keep a supple heart through heavy and callousing times and the painful hashtags that are becoming part of our story as a country.

The concert is much like the song, an offering of that attempt to make a musical monument when the trending is over, when the designated days of outrage that leave us more triggered have ended. Like the song, it is a place of uncomfortable questions (some being historic), a space to face or deposit the unprocessed, a way to reach for a layer of joy during mess and maybe even a moment healing together as we all wonder how we got here as a nation.

Nothing is normal here so this is not a normal concert.

*Two nights : 8pm to 11pm on the 11th and 12th of December. Untitled Basement, 7 Reserve Street, Braamfontein. Tickets available at quicket.co.za