The Hendrik Witbooi Project
The Hendrik Witbooi Project is a music theatre project. It is collaborative work for live performance Miller is realizing together with Jane Taylor and hentie van der Herwe. It is based on the correspondence between Hendrik Witbooi and Theodor Leutwein in April-October 1894 in German South-Wes Africa (present-day Namibia). In this piece, Miller is working with samples of traditional Nama folk-music as well as archive recordings made by the linguist Frau Sigrid Schmidt between 1960 and 2000.
Philip Miller, South African composer living in Johannesburg, has always been studying and analyzing the different South African traditions and musical repertories, coexisting and evolving in the dynamic cultural situation of his city, using in his compositions fragments, re-elaborations and quotations coming from different traditional music styles. He has worked directly with many soloists coming from Zulu, Nama, Sotho and Xhosa cultures.
