Sam Turpin’s notes on grief

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