Death is unplanned. Unexpected and undoing. Confounding and perhaps, even sobering.
Despite being marred beyond recognition by its startling arrival, death occurs and reoccurs. Forcing us all to reckon with the ways in which it pronounces itself into our lives.
Perhaps, as poet Koleka Putuma writes, it takes strength to grieve. A cruel, debilitating strength, to fall apart and bear witness to those whose brief passage here has come to an end. As the memories of a love no longer materialised in the present, loop and fold back into themselves, the strength wanes and fluctuates in its resolve.
South African rapper, producer and musical artist, Sam Turpin speaks honestly about the contours of this kind of grief. The penultimate song on his Sofar set list at Untitled Basement in late April is a mediation on loss and a letter to his late mother Gisèle Wulfsohn.
When we meet at KOHI cafe at 44 Stanley, Turpin speaks to the spectre of his mother and the ways in which he forged an artistic voice in an attempt to reckon with the debilitating loss of a parent at a young age.
“I used to refer to it as more abstract in terms of a more general concept of loss but I did once do a song called Summer Evening where I spoke to my mom directly,” Turpin says. “It was like I wrote a letter to her. It was special because a singer named India Shan sang on it and she is the daughter of my mom’s friend and fellow journalist Jillian Edelstein, so that was like a generational collaboration because our moms were tight.”
The song is peppered with the detailed intimacies of a relationship cut short. A boy reflecting on the love and lessons that turned him into a man. “Such a loss is pivotal for a young person in ways they don’t understand when it happens and so music as a general outlet of expression is a tool to deal with it,” reflects Turpin in our conversation as we note the upcoming 15th anniversary of her departure.
“Music transcends time and space. I can speak to the loss, I can speak to the event and I can speak to her.” The song, Summer Evening, also traverses the socio-political and weighs in on the characters that form our geopolitical realities. This is unsurprising given Wulfsohn’s biography.
As a photographic journalist, Wulfsohn formed part of the Afrapix collective, a group of amateur and professional photographers who opposed apartheid and documented South Africa in the 1980s. Later in her career, Wulfsohn would document the HIV/Aids crisis in South Africa. The commitment to seeing injustice for what it was left an indelible mark on Turpin and is present in both his scholarly and artistic interests.
“For some reason, it was literally around the year anniversary of my mom’s passing, the only thing that could get me out of bed was this idea for a song. It just wouldn’t leave me. I remember opening my laptop at my cousin’s house and I opened GarageBand and created a simple piano line.
“I did a very simple bass line, some simple drums but the drums knocked and I remember [having the drums that way] because I knew that this had to pull me out of this funk,” Turpin says. “I remember having an image of birds and cranes and around the same time I remember having an idea of what I wanted the music video to look like.”
The moment would start his career trajectory. It was Turpin’s conception of poiesis — where he brought a life and creative possibilities, which did not exist, into tangible expressions. Turpin started to release his first self-made music videos and short EPs online. While his audience was relatively small, his ideas felt poignant and reflective of a cultural zeitgeist where independent artists were multi-idiomatic in approach and the pairing of the visual medium brought more reflective layers into the auditory. In 2017 Sam released his first full length mixtape, 4am in Jozi.
Alongside his solo career, where he self-produced music videos and short films,
Turpin also collaborated with several local and international artists. Some of his collaborators include Lenny-Dee from Bye Beneco along with director Katya Abedian-Rawháni on their short film for his song Sahara Flow. Perhaps his most popular collaborations are housed in The Charles Géne Suite ensemble and in the group Cold Chinese Food. Through the collectives, Turpin was able to play with an array of eclectic sounds that sharpened his skill set as a producer and a lyricist.
In early 2022, Turpin participated in the POST POST digital concert organised by Music in Africa and Tshepang Ramoba of the punk group BLK JKS. He released his single Broken Mirror, collaborating on the cover artwork with Japanese visual artist Keisuke Nakayama. His orientation towards just futures despite difficult existential realities remained with him, as was evidenced in this project.
“The song itself,” he writes, “serves as a reminder for us all to try to do good in the world, with the lyrics warning of the dangers of getting caught up in oppressive systems.” When he performs the song at the Sofar Sound showcase, it seems to hold a resonance with an audience of creatives and serious music listeners.
Thinking back on the show, Turpin explains that “what was special about the Sofar show was that it was the first time I did a solo gig with a live band versus a DJ. It was a milestone in that sense.” The live band coupled with the intimacy of the Sofar Sounds space underscored the deliberate intimacy in Turpin’s lyricism.
His work, which moves between the aural and the visual, holds the heirlooms of memories created in boyhood, with the reflective benefit of early adulthood. Looking to the future, Turpin is excited about the release of more solo-driven work in the many artistic hats that he dons as a quintessential young multihyphenate artist.
Sam Turrpin will be performing with The Charles Géne Suite at Untitled Basement on 19 June 2026.
The legacy of photographer Gisèle Wulfsohn echoes through her son’s music as Sam Turpin confronts sorrow through art
