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‘Cape Rhythm’ brings goema, Klopse and Cape Town memory to Company’s Garden

  • Staff Reporter
2 min read
Goema, Klopse & Memory brings Cape Town’s musical and cultural traditions into focus through photography and sound.
Goema, Klopse & Memory brings Cape Town’s musical and cultural traditions into focus through photography and sound.Picture: Bheki Radebe/ ANA Studios
Goema, Klopse & Memory brings Cape Town’s musical and cultural traditions into focus through photography and sound.
Goema, Klopse & Memory brings Cape Town’s musical and cultural traditions into focus through photography and sound.Picture: Bheki Radebe/ ANA Studios
On display in Company’s Garden, the exhibition explores Goema, the Kaapse Klopse and the memories connected to these living Cape Town traditions.
On display in Company’s Garden, the exhibition explores Goema, the Kaapse Klopse and the memories connected to these living Cape Town traditions.Picture: Bheki Radebe/ ANA Studios

Opened on the weekend in the Company’s Garden on September 5, ‘Cape Rhythm: Goema, Klopse & Memory’, is an outdoor exhibition as part of the festival.

The exhibition explores Goema and the Kaapse Klopse as living expressions of memory and identity. 

The collection of photographs is drawn from the archive of Cape Town filmmaker and photographer Melany Ismail, offering a contemporary lens on a syncretic soundscape.

The contemporaneity of goema lies in its sonic component, which is represented through the music of ‘Boskasie’, which accompanies this exhibition.

The Cape Town Photography Festival has returned for its second edition under the theme “Truth”, bringing 40 exhibitions and more than 160 photographers to venues across the city from 2–26 September.

Among the highlights is ‘Cape Rhythm: Goema, Klopse & Memory’, an outdoor exhibition in the Company’s Garden featuring photographs from filmmaker and photographer Melany Ismail’s archive. The exhibition explores how goema, the Kaapse Klopse and photography shape Cape Town’s memories and cultural identity.

Festival director Heidi Erdmann, said: “Photography has long been trusted as evidence, but today images can be easily manipulated, re-contextualised and weaponised. The festival is not a search for certainty, but an exploration of how truths are produced, challenged and resisted, and the role photography plays in that process.”

Photography, music and memory come together in Cape Rhythm, part of the 2026 Cape Town Photography Festival.
Photography, music and memory come together in Cape Rhythm, part of the 2026 Cape Town Photography Festival.Picture: Bheki Radebe/ ANA Studios

Festival highlights include:

  • Cape Rhythm: Goema, Klopse & Memory in the Company’s Garden – an outdoor exhibition exploring the relationship between photography, Cape Town and its musical and cultural history.
  • I Witnessed This, presented at the Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation and curated by Pippa Hetherington, bringing together diverse photographic voices from across Africa.
  • International perspectives from Réunion Island, introducing Cape Town audiences to photographic narratives from across the Indian Ocean.
  • PICHA Stock workshops, offering practical engagement while introducing audiences to an important platform for African photography and visual storytelling
  • The International Student Photography Exhibition, now four times larger than last year and showcasing the next generation of photographic voices across three venues.

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“We live in a world saturated with images…Rather than simply asking whether photographs can still be trusted, we need to become more attentive viewers – questioning who made an image, how it was made, what it shows, what may be absent and what claims it is making.”

Since its inaugural edition, the festival has doubled in size, with 40 exhibitions, more than 160 photographers and a month-long programme spanning conversations, demonstrations, film screenings, talks, guided walks and more. New venues this year include the Castle of Good Hope and Company’s Garden.