Archives do not only live in books or institutional collections. Sometimes they live in places — in neighbourhoods, community halls and cultural centres where history continues to be spoken, performed and remembered. One such place is Eyethu Heritage Hall.
It is here that a fascinating storytelling platform titled Jazz In Our Plagues has taken root — a project that turns historic markers into living narratives through short films, conversations and music. Guiding that work is writer, researcher and cultural practitioner Lerato Tshabalala-Mini. With Jazz In Our Plagues, she and her collaborators are creating a space where history becomes conversation — where the stories behind South Africa’s jazz legacy are told not only through scholarship, but through film, dialogue and the living voices of the people who carry that history.