photo by Hassan Hajjaj

I imagined John Blanke's clarion call - his trumpet's clear, ringing sound - echoing down the millennia, uniting a past, rich in artistry, with a vision of a glorious global African future. It is a sound which will be heard by people across time and space, a sound which will summon people to come together to meet in peace and harmony rather than on the battlefield or in the mean streets. And if people want to get a bit more aggressive with each other, perhaps when QPR play Chelsea in the Champions' League Final of 3015, Blanke's trumpet will be heard like a giant referee's whistle awarding the winning penalty to the Hoops - which will be scored by our £3 billion signing from Lesotho F.C., Nelson Moshoeshoe. 

In fact, seeing the image of John Blanke for the first time immediately put me in mind of the Seana Marena or 'King's Blanket' which the great southern African King Moshoeshoe 1 (c.1786 - 1870) adopted for his people, the southern Sotho, to keep them warm in his mountainous 'Kingdom of the Sky'. In centuries to come, when the salvation army of Lesotho has saved the world from alien invasion, Blanke's trumpet will be the first to break the news that the secret of King Moshoeshoe's success in battling and bamboozling the British, the Boers and the Zulus was in fact his judicious use of vibranium. At that point the truth of what many people had suspected all along will be confirmed - that Lesotho and Wakanda are one and the same.

Chris Spring
Curator, Artist and Historian