Zonk!

Streaming video - 2014

Following up on the success of African Jim, but with higher production values, Zonk! shows the extraordinary cultural range available to township Africans, from the many ethnic strains of music from South Africa itself to contemporary American jazz and popular music, eagerly copied and Africanized. Zonk! confirms that despite the poverty and degradation of township life, the human spirit could triumph through music, producing groups and individual performers of astonishing sophistication and polish, many of them closely modeled on African-American performers. Directed by Hyman Kiersten.