Angelique Kidjo @ Spier for Easter Sun
The…
Old Mutual Encounters Festival comes to Spier for the first time on Sunday 16 April 2006, with a line-up which is set to wow audiences. Old Mutual and Oppikoppi Productions have joined forces again to make sure that the Easter weekend is a memorable one by presenting a star-studded programme.
Angelique Kidjo will be performing at the Old Mutual Encounters Picnic at Spier on Easter Sunday, along with talented and diverse local icons such as Watershed, Chris Chameleon, Vusi Mahlasela and Robin Auld.
This African-born songstress, Angelique Kidjo who has been nominated for four Grammy awards, has cross-pollinated the West African traditions of her childhood in Benin with elements of American R&B funk and jazz, as well as influences from Europe and Latin America. Throughout her career she has collaborated with a diverse group of international artists like Santana and Gilberto Gil. Her duet with Dave Matthews on the song “Iwoya” which appeared on her last CD Black Ivory Soul, was a critical success that helped diversify her fan base.
“Music has the ability to cross borders, transcend boundaries and unite people”, says Angelique of her music.
CLICK HERE TO GO TO SPIER.
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6 Feb 2006
If you are a regular Representor you will know that we rate Lebo Mashile as one of South Africa’s most incredible live performers – the sincerity of her poetry and the emotion driving her live performance is a must-see. She is one of several famous names on the program this weekend at the open-air poetry festival at the Spier Summer Arts season on the 3 and 4 February. Go and lap up sweet words and sweet rhythms in the fading Cape summer evenings.
The Spier Summer Arts Season has collaborated with acclaimed author and poet Antjie Krog to present this new open-air Poetry Festival of famous names and famous poems.
Antjie Krog, renowned poet, writer, journalist and Extraordinary professor at the University of the Western Cape, has curated this programme of poets where audiences can expect to experience a diverse mix of local and international poets performing their work in English, Afrikaans and Xhosa. Poems will be read, spoken, performed with bands, rapped or delivered from the gut in the case of Imbongi Mngomeni.
Acclaimed poets of the likes of Yvette Christiansý, (South African poet, novelist and educator based in New York), Lebogang Mashile (poet and television presenter – born to exiled South African parents and brought up in the States), Godessa (Comprises three young women on a righteous hip-hop mission), Finuala Dowling (former Unisa lecturer turned writer and poet), Chirikure Chirikure (Zimbabwe’s most acclaimed poet), Chiwoniso Maraire (American born singer and poet, but relocated to Zimbabwe), Tom Lanoye (one of Europe’s most lauded young playwrights and controversial city poet of Antwerp), Chantel Erfort (writer, journalist and co founder of record label, Dala Flat), Koos Kombuis (also referred to as the Bob Dylan of Afrikaans) and Rocco de Villiers (composer and musical director), Toast Coetzer (one of a new generation of Afrikaans poets performing with Buckfever Underground), Imbongi Mngomeni (praise singer for the Tembu House in the Eastern Cape) and the Xhosa rapper Teba Shumba (founder of kwaito group Skeem), are the line-up for the open-air Poetry Festival.
The uniqueness of this festival is that audiences can compile their own programmes for the evening. This is made possible by two venues running simultaneous one hour long programmes. During the last ten minutes of the hour the audience can move to a different venue for a different set of poets and poems, or stay for the next round.
One venue is the river deck, comfortably furnished with sofas, ottomans and cattle hides, and the other is the amphitheatre which has been curtained off to make a smaller, intimate venue suitable for poetry readings. This effectively means that audiences are not tied to one venue and can cross-over to either venue to hear which ever poet they wish to hear, without having to pay twice. The two venues will be linked by food and book stalls and jazz.
The different venues will be hosted by Antjie Krog and Douglas Petersen, and for the romantics, on both days the programmes will end with a selection of love poems read and translated into various languages by the poets.
Translation will be a prominent feature of the festival. “Nobody’s language should be a dead end street. It’s a tradition I learned from the Dutch,” says Krog. Poems delivered in any other language than English will be translated. In the special love poem section English poems will be translated into Xhosa, Dutch and Afrikaans.
3 & 4 February 2006
19h30
Spier Estate – river deck and the amphitheatre.
Ticket prices are R90 and the seats are unreserved.
For further information telephone (021) 809 1111
Or click here to go to the website.
