From 1891-1893 a group of young African singers travelled by boat to Britain, Canada, and America. This ensemble of missionary-educated Black people, named The African Native Choir, were on a mission to raise funds for a technical school in Kimberley, South Africa.

Inspired by photography from that tour and using traditional Xhosa and contemporary dance styles alongside atmospheric soundscapes, choreographer and performer Gregory Maqoma and musical director Thuthuka Sibisi weave together recorded personal accounts of the African Choir, revealing a drama of global dimensions.

With a single dancer (Maqoma), four vocal soloists and an onstage a cappella chorus, Broken Chord not only reflects on an archive but triggers, critiques, and comments on urgent issues of migration, dispossession, borders, and paths of forced closure, raising important questions about the relationship between the colonized and the colonizer, and either’s complicity in shaping and shifting a South African narrative—past and present.