KELEKETLA!

Keleketla! is a landmark collaborative album created and produced by Ruth Daniel and Malose Malahlela through In Place of War, bringing together Coldcut (founders of Ninja Tune) with the Keleketla arts initiative in Johannesburg and an extraordinary cast of South African and British musicians. Recorded in Soweto and mixed in London, the nine-track album channels the spirit of call and response, weaving together gqom, hip-hop, jazz, dub, and protest music into what the Guardian described as "multi-genre exuberance." Artists include gqom producer DJ Mabheko, anti-capitalist hip-hop collective Soundz of the South, percussionist Thabang Tabane, London saxophonists Tamar Osborn and Shabaka Hutchings, rapper Yugen Blakrok, and the late Afrobeat legend Tony Allen, with instrumental selections curated through Johannesburg's pioneering Mushroom Hour Half Hour label.

Released on Ninja Tune in 2020, the album received a glowing four-star review in the Guardian, which praised it as "beguiling" and celebrated the way it pieced together hip-hop, jazz, dub, and protest music "like the many languages of a diasporic conversation." Tracks like Future Toyi Toyi, Crystallise, and Papua Merdeka showcase the project's political depth and sonic ambition, with the Guardian concluding that Keleketla!'s multilingual, effusive response is "one worth hearing." The album stands as a powerful example of In Place of War's model of using music and creativity to bridge communities across conflict and inequality.