I followed The Brother Moves On around South Africa once. True story, I even wrote about it here. I’ve seen them many more times after that, and each time was a trip. On their recent trip to Cape Town, they stopped over to record some songs for the Big Leap sessions, an initiative by Assembly Radio described as “a series of intimate performances from some of South Africa’s most exciting new and established artists.” The idea is to do two songs and one original cover. The Brother decided to cover Madala Kunene’s ‘Da Tom’ (third track in their set below). It’s worth going to their show just to see them perform that one song live:

* Featured image by Greg Marinovich.

Further Reading

How to unmake the world

In this wide-ranging conversation, para-disciplinary artist Nolan Oswald Dennis reflects on space, time, Blackness, and the limits of Western knowledge—offering a strategy for imagining grounded in African and anti-colonial traditions.

A migrant’s tale

On his latest EP, Kwame Brenya turns a failed migration into musical testimony—offering a biting critique of ECOWAS, broken borders, and the everyday collapse of pan-African ideals.

What Portugal forgets

In the film ‘Tales of Oblivion,’ Dulce Fernandes excavates the buried history of slavery in Portugal, challenging a national mythology built on sea voyages, silence, and selective memory.

Trump tariffs and US Imperialism

Trump’s April 2025 tariff blitz ignited market chaos and deepened rifts within his own coalition. Beneath the turmoil lies a battle between technocrats, ultranationalists, and anti-imperial populists, all vying to reshape—or destroy—American global power.