Neo Muyanga is a South African composer-musician and installation artist. His practice straddles the spheres of opera, theatre-making, installation art and scholarship. A common thread in all his work is a keen interest in storytelling that is premised on archival research, repurposes mythology and which especially involves an ongoing investigation into how voice, as a social vector, continually shapes and ultimately serves to constitute society.
Born in Soweto, Muyanga’s compositional style reflects largely his grounding in the South African choral tradition while also exhibiting aspects of his research and learnings assimilated from studies in the Italian Madrigal tradition, Ethiopian Mezmur and the Shaabi musics of Egypt.
Muyanga first burst onto the South African music scene as co-founder of the lyrical acoustic duo, Blk Sonshine. In 2008 he co-founded The Pan African Space Station (PASS), an experimental African music and art platform that became a pop-up live radio studio, performance and exhibition space, research platform and ongoing internet-based radio station. Muyanga tours widely as a bandleader and choral conductor. He was composer-in-residence (2017) at both the Johannesburg International Mozart Festival, Johannesburg, and the National Arts Festival, Makhanda (SA).