Jazzy Treat at House on Fire
Whoever told these jazz cats to head to the Swazi Kingdom after their gig at the Joy of Jazz was doing them a huge favour, not only will they get blown away by the serenity, beauty and people in the kingdom, but the people of the kingdom get to feast on an unusual jazzy musical treat. Nice one. Sam Mtukudzi, (the gifted son of the legendary Oliver) and his superbly talented friends from New York and Denmark, Max Wild and Soren Moller, are gonna blow the House on Fire down. GO GO GO!!! MAX WILD & SAM MTUKUDZI with special guest Soren Moller at House on Fire, Swaziland 30th August Swazi audiences are set for a thrilling concert on Saturday August 30 featuring powerhouse jazz saxophonist Max Wild from New York in a stunning Afro-beat collaboration with Sam Mtukudzi, son of legendary Zimbabwean performer ‘Tuku’, fast emerging as a major singer-songwriter sensation in his own right. Joining the 8-piece band as special guest is the prodigious Danish jazz pianist Soren Moller, regarded as Denmark’s hottest new jazz talent. The act is being featured at this year’s Standard Bank Joy of Jazz festival in Johannesburg, and immediately after performs exclusively at House on Fire. In April and May this year Max Wild and Sam Mtukudzi launched their new brand of jazz Afro-beat, with overtones of chimurenga music, wowing audiences at the famous Joe’s Pub in New York and then on to HIFA Festival in Zimbabwe. Max and Sam have created a sound that spans continents, a collision of jazz and Afro-beat. In April Max and Sam followed up their single ‘Teerera’ with a full-length album, an ambitious cross-Atlantic collaboration, which teams Max’s New York jazz quintet with Sam Mtukudzi, features Oliver Mtukudzi and showcases compositions by Max, Sam, Oliver, and Nigerian bassist Michael Olatuja, with lyrics in Shona, Ndebele, Yoruba, and English. Max Wild has been turning heads on the Big Apple jazz scene with his distinct sound and Afro-infused jazz compositions. Born in Zimbabwe where he grew up, his musical career took off under the tutelage of British jazz greats Tim Garland and Julian Arguelles. He toured UK and Germany in 2001 performing at Berlin’s prestigious A Trane Jazz Club. In London Max appeared with Guildhall Jazz Orchestra, performing Gil Evans’ Porgy and Bess with Randy Brecker at Barbican Hall and Gil Evans’ Sketches of Spain with Dave Liebman. Since moving to New York in 2002, Max has been part of the Manhattan Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, directed by acclaimed Latin percussionist Bobby Sanabria, with many performances at New York’s renowned Birdland jazz club. Max has performed twice at Carnegie...
Call for Entries: South – a travelling Expo.
Get your creativity seen in the innovative SOUTH travelling exhibition showing off the best of South African Creativity, kicking off at Design Indaba in Feb in Cape Town and then moving on to take over the world. The top three designs will win money, imali, moolah and by the way they’re looking for a range of creativity and design. Hurry up/Sheshani, entries close in November. SOUTH seeks to uncover the finest examples of South African creativity across a broad spectrum of disciplines and forms. And, for the first time on one platform, showcase a dazzling array of our finest creative produce. ART. ARCHITECTURE. ADVERTISING. CRAFT. DESIGN. FASHION. FILM&VIDEO. JEWELLERY. MUSIC. NEW MEDIA. PERFORMANCE ART. PHOTOGRAPHY. The kind of creative excellence that will best infl uence the judges is neither black nor white, nor ethnic, nor neutral, nor euro, nor west, nor east. It’s a harmony out of contradiction. A balance of extremes. That fine line between order and chaos. SOUTH seeks executions that capture the soul of this mystique. Design Indaba has collaborated with the Creative Circle and The Loerie Awards to launch the Creative Alliance. Dedicated to promoting South African creativity on an international front, the alliance will be initiating a travelling exhibition sponsored by the SABC. The exhibition will debut at Design Indaba 2009. Entitled South, the exhibition is a celebration of the gloriously positive, ridiculously naïve and relentlessly spontaneous creative industries inherent in our country. Seeking to encapsulate the bold, lawless, cheeky, crossover, politically incorrect flavour of the South African imagination, the exhibition is a celebration of the home of high-class ashtrays made out of elephant dung and pap served with sushi. The exhibition will comprise of existing local and international designs which best encapsulate “South”, as well as the award, open to participation from creatives across all industries including advertising, design, film and video, music, performing arts, fashion design, new media, publishing, radio and television, industrial design, visual art, architecture and crafts. Three prizes will be awarded. * The overall winner receives R100 000. * Second place receives R50 000. * Third place receives R25 000. Onwards… upwards… southwards… viva! For entry forms and more information visit: www.designindaba.com/south Enquiries: Michael Purdham at Interactive Africa Tel: (021) 465 9966 Fax: (021) 465 9978 south@interactiveafrica.com Onwards… upwards… southwards…...
Represent Competition: Tickets To Young Guns
We’ve got three pairs of tickets to give away to this weekends Young Guns gig in Norwood featuring F-eezy and Koldproduk, just click on their names to fly to their MySpace pages and listen to their words. If you’d like to be a winner, simply email EDITORista and tell us what the name of the venue is. Please include your name, surname, id number, email and phone contact details. Represent! If you’re into hip hop, then chances are you’re going to love the next Levi’s® Young Guns gig at the Boxercising Gym in Jozi. Supported but Y Magazine, it’s got a lot going for it, most importantly live performances from F-eezy and Koldproduk, two of Mzansi’s fastest rising rap talents. Of course, it’s sponsored by YFM and it’s going to be another of those awesome Levi’s® Young Guns parties. You know, the ones that take South Africa’s most ruthless and restless acts, challenge them to give their wildest performances ever, and then get them on stage in front of hundreds of diehard fans. It’s like some deviant social experiment where the results are always what’s least expected. Pretty cool, hey? So make sure you’re there when the effects of this one are felt. Don’t come crying if you’re not. Taking the mic on the night is the almighty F-eezy, the young emcee who’s suffering from an attack of the hip hop virus, an illness that makes him break out in spontaneous rhymes, spitting wordplay that’s infected with ups and downs of everyday life, verses that are sick, sick, sick! This man is hardcore. He speaks his truth and for as long as his words hang in the air, it’s the absolute truth. The rest just falls away when he gets going about everything from his love of rap to the hardships he’s faced, themes that came to the fore on his debut album, Gate Khahlela. This is ghetto life uncensored – the soundtrack to the other side. Koldproduk’s also in the house. With their mould-breaking debut album, All Under Heaven, Moki Sage and Kaspa delivered a wake-up call to the local hip hop community: keep up with us if you can. With astonishing style and an acute sense of originality they’ve taken a whole new approach, jamming their tracks full of the vast musical styles that have influenced them. The result is a hybridised, head-turning, heat-seeking hotbed of eclectic beats all layered with a positive messages and super-surprising twists and turns. These boys are hungry. They want to take hip hop to places it’s never dreamed of going to. And if you’re coming down to Levi’s® Young Guns, then...
…of bugchasers and watussi faghags
mhhh, this looks deep, disturbing and definitely for those seeking out alternative mind-expanding art exhibitions… which is what art is supposed to do, move you and make you think! Go on, go and explore the many layers and narratives ingrained in Athi-Patra Ruga’s body of new work at ArtExtra. And by the way, if you’ve been wondering what the hell the word DYSTOPIA means, think the opposite of Utopia, as explained by Dictionary.com: an (imagined) society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding. …of bugchasers and watussi faghags A solo exhibition by Athi-Patra Ruga 20 August – 20 September 2008 373 jan smuts avenue craighall johannesburg gallery hours: tuesday to friday 1030 – 1730 saturday 930 – 1500 t011.326.0034 f011.326.0041 info@artextra.co.za Please join us for the opening on Wednesday 20 August 2008 at 6pm …of bugchasers and watussi faghags is the first solo exhibition of Athi-Patra Ruga’s to be held in Johannesburg. The exhibition revolves around the principal character of the “bugchaser”, Beiruth, and his ‘tales of counter-penetration’, realized through craft-mediations and performances undertaken in various urban centers around South Africa and abroad. “This body of work is an interrogation of my interest in the history of image-making, and of displacement – both of people and images. The title of the show is double-edged: it refers to the sexual practice of ‘bug-chasing’ [the act of contracting the H.I. virus intentionally] – with it’s seemingly altruistic motivation; while also referring to the history of the ‘Watussi’, a colonial mis-pronouncement of the Tutsi people of the Burundi-Ruanda nation. The Watussi myth is further explored in the Pixilated Arcadia series of tapestries, referencing paintings done by Irma Stern during her 1943 and 1946 expeditions to central Africa depicting the “Watussi”. Stern’s works are re-narrated through irreverent subversion, with the aim of focusing attention on the implicit ethnographic and propagandistic undertones of the work. The “Watussi women” meditations find their retort in the … watussi moneyshot [2008] tapestry – a parody on the historical and the contemporary hoochie-mamma… Beiruth’s name is derived from a pun around the middle-eastern city of Beirut – a play on the theme of Orientalism; but more importantly he is the illusive figure that qualifies the autonomous body against that of the sovereign state. In my new video: …after he left [2008] , Beiruth is documented undertaking various journeys: catching a taxi to the Cape Town township of Atlantis, a place that is a far cry from its legendary namesake; Beiruth seeking a sensual ideal in the form of the increasingly-popular evangelical churches. The video is accompanied by a series of performative stills … the naivety...
African Dope releases: Moxyland
We love it, an album released to accompany a book. Read all about it, Cape Townians there’s a launch party this weekend at Fiction on the 14th August, see the flyer below. African Dope Publishing proudly presents our debut release – Moxyland the Soundtrack. It’s a 14 track compilation, created as a soundtrack to Lauren Beukes’s cult novel, the futuristic urban thriller Moxyland (Jacana 2008). The compilation is an ill-bient mash with a distinctly Cape Town flavour and a dark, gritty, futuristic edge to reflect the mood of the book, and features artists like The Tone Deaf Junkies, Taxi Violence, The Real Estate Agents, Damn Right, Krushed & Sorted, Mix n Blend, Dank, Mr Gelatine and Jacob Israel. The tracks were compiled and selekta’d by African Dope’s Honeyb and author Lauren Beukes, and mastered by Fletcher @ Krushed & Sorted Studios in Cape Town. All tracks are published by African Dope Publishing (African Dope’s music Publishing company), which publishes songs by a growing number of happening South African composers and artists, and offers music research, clearance and licensing services to the music, film and advertising industries. The CD, which features an exclusive short story by Lauren Beukes and beautiful artwork by Dale Halvorsen is distributed in South Africa by Soul Candi Distribution and is also exclusively available from the African Dope Online Store and selected outlets as a CD-BOOK...
New Music Review: DJ Fresh goes Electro
He’s a legend and we’ve lapped up every single one of his albums… As you may know, our motto this year (and one of our goals since we debuted) is to encourage a ColourlessSociety in South Africa, where we remove ourselves from the ridiculous skin boxes (never mind music, lifestyle blah blah), most cast upon us, some self-imposed, but many that continue to be self-perpetuating and maddeningly limiting… We believe Fresh is one of the pioneers of the break free mentality and how we would describe a leader of the ColourlessSociety that we strive for. Dawn Penny sniffs out his foray into Electro… NICE ONE. Break ’em down… Represent! 7 beats out 10 We’ve all been there with him, from Fresh House Flava to Fresh House Classics to Definition of House, and now DJ Fresh goes a little experimental with his house. Fresh goes Electro is the first in the new Fresh series, “DJ Fresh goes…”. I will admit up until listening to this CD, I have not been a huge fan of electro house. I mean I could listen to a song or two while on the dance floor but I’ve never sat down and given it a listen. And I will say that as many times as Fresh has not missed with his previous offerings, he hit the nail right on the head with this one. He starts the CD out easing you in to the electro beats (so as to not shock his fans too much early on?), which I appreciated cos I was still trying to get over the sound coming out of the speakers. As the CD carries on he gets a lot harder on the electro beats, like very hard, to the point where you feel like you’re in a trance. But then just as you think he can’t get any harder, he softens things up towards the end, which restores you to the CD and wakes you from your zombie state. What’s also really cool about this album is that Fresh mixes all those classics like Sing it Back by Chic Flowers and Kirsty Hawkshaw vs Kinky Roland with Fine Day – among others – that had us on the dance floor at house parties. My favourite tracks – which might be hits – were track number 3, 7, 9, 12, 13 and 15. The rest I felt were a little heavy for my ears. If you’re a DJ Fresh fan you will love this but if you’re strictly a house fan, the house that we know Fresh for, this might be a little hard for you to swallow. But I was...
Proudly brought to you by:
