Although the Joy of Jazz spaceship landed and departed Johannesburg a fortnight ago, looking at Vuyo Giba's photographs of Mali's Wassoulou punk-rock dervish left Bongani Madondo still reeling from the magic of it all.

Listen to this article 16 min Listen to this article 16 min A week after the 25th anniversary of the Joy of Jazz musical fête whipped audiences into a frenzy in Johannesburg last month, something much calmer was in the offing for me.

Or so I thought. How wrong I was.

I received a stash of black-and-white shots through which the photographer presents a series of cinematic noir frames featuring the performance of Paris-based Malian sensation Fatoumata Diawara.

"My life is strange. I started speaking early. I had so much energy. I wanted to say something through dance. I danced all the time. I couldn't hold back. I danced in the streets. I danced everywhere." (Fatoumata Diawara, Songlines, October 2011)

The instruction was simple enough: you might need to check this unknown photographer. Cautiously soaking in each photograph frame by frame, I instantly knew the Gqeberha photographer, Vuyo Giba, who had travelled from the Windy City with neither sponsor nor place to "squat" in Sin City, would not remain obscure forever.

In her brief, taut, tight and unforgivingly nocturnal, and yet novelistic visual narration, Diawara is enshrouded in black. Although she is bathed in the pathos of the night,...