Represent Review: Food Wine Design Fair Nov 2010
We sent our fabulara Representah Zamantungwa Khumalo (otherwise known as JoziStylista) to sample the delights at this year’s Food Wine Design Fair at Hyde Park. For more photos of the event visit our Flickr set of the event here. Over to the fab diva Zama… Sharpile sisi wami! It’s 32 degrees C on a Monday afternoon. I’m inside a computer lab on campus and the guy sitting next to me is giving me the side eye because I’ve been starring at this screen for the past hour. I find it hard to believe that, just yesterday, I was on the roof-top of the Hyde Park shopping centre for the annual Food Wine Design Fair. Why is it so hard for me to believe this? Well, for a start, it was raining cats and dogs in most of Joziland (okay maybe not cats and dogs, but definitely kittens and puppies!), I was in the company of amazing people (and not the weirdo sitting next to me) and – and this is favourite part, I was eating freshly baked bread, heaven sent chocolate brownies and drinking exotic coffee. This year’s Fair pulled out all the stops! There were exhibiters from as close as Soweto, to as far as Cape Town and Limpopo. I started off by scouting the place, walking around and going to the stall that grabbed my attention. The first one was Mielie. This small community business creates beautiful handcrafted pieces made from recycled fabric. I spent a good 30 minutes at their stall drooling over the different designs of their bags. Another stall with great bags was Barok, a Limpopo based company. They have very interesting designs and I loved their use of different textures and fabrics. Just in case you were wondering, yes, I have a bag addiction… Now that we’ve got that out of the way… I found myself in the vicinity of the food stalls and being the food lover that I am, I couldn’t resist the temptation to try out the different foods. I tried out banana chutney and it was orgasmic, to say the least! The only chutney I’d ever had before that was Mrs Ball’s Chutney. I don’t think I even knew there were other chutney’s out there. Something else I found strange yet very tasteful was beetroot jam! The shocking thing is, it wasn’t even RED! Food and design aside, the highlight of the Fair for me was the Marie Claire Pop up store. The Marie Claire stall was very interactive; it had cool gadgets, great wine, a vintage sale and a chance to meet the editors of the magazine. I didn’t...
Review: Die Antwoord live in Belgium – ZEFFING HOT!
On the way to watch Die Antwoord last night all healthy eating habits were broken as we chowed down at our local fastfood outlet to get to the show on time. Behind us two young women in their early 20s were perched at a window booth doing that annoying noughties thing, playing music on their cellphone at full volume. It was a depressing set of soppy badly-produced RnB and as my partner-in-crime put it so aptly, there’s no worse ‘bad RnB’ than French RnB. The girls loved it though and sang along to every lyric mimicking the sadness, the heartbreak, the ecstasy of whichever madamoiselle’s mediocre voice was blaring out. I was on the brink of heartburn from the sheer painfulness of it all until they suddenly switched stations and I sat back enraptured. The RnB turned into a Bollywood hitsong, the girls jumped giddily up during the opening notes and began to act out a choreographed dance routine while singing every word of the song. The point is, they certainly didn’t look or sound Indian and yet they knew the lyrics by heart. You see, they’d bought into the package deal of the Bollywood song, they clearly loved the exotic melody, the high-pitched rise-and-fall singing style; and their clean dance moves showed they’d spent hours imitating the music video. They loved it so much that they’d learnt the words, every single one of them, while more than likely not understanding a single one. Little did I realise that I would experience this same feeling of awe times one million a little over an hour later, as I listened to hundreds of European fans singing along to Die Antwoord’s mishmashed South African lyrics in a beautifully rof yet finely perfected South African accent. So much of naas. I just couldn’t get the grin off my face throughout the performance, and looking back, nor could most of the audience. It was absolutely thrilling – Die Antwoord is the modern-day antidote to boring live music performances. I’m no music fundi but I am certainly a music lover and I can attest that throughout my lifespan and certainly way before that, English language songs, largely from UK and USA based artists, have dominated both the global music charts and the mainstream ones in South Africa. For how long have South Africans complained about the rest of the world not knowing about our music, about how much we hope to enter the international music scene, about how we dream of people knowing more of our artists than the legends Johnny Clegg and Miriam Makeba. From Rock to Kwaito to Folk to Soul to...
Represent Review: Cape Town International Jazz Festival 2010
Between bracing the Cape winds, running between stages and having dinner with Bilal (coughcough), our two fabulous Jozi representer’s Lebogang and Akona (you’re always a Jozi girl for us) still managed to cover the Cape Town International Jazz Festival for us this year… and with such panache… What can we say besides a massive Sharpile. Watch your snailmail for your thank yous 😉 See Lebogang’s gorgeous photostory of the event here and read Akona’s review below: Represent! This year’s 11th annual Cape Town Jazz Festival, which took place last weekend, once again got it’s stamp of approval for being one of the grandest music festivals in the country, I also think this event, previously known as North Sea Jazz Festival, is one of the better organised festivals out there save for the crazy Cape Town wind trying to get it’s time in the spotlight. The line – up was incredible, the most exciting part for me are the number of fusion artists I had never heard of – you see, the Jazz Fest for me is the place I go to be introduced to new music without being caught out as an ignoramus by die-hard fans. T his is where the artists have to bear their souls through their craft, this is where they introduce themselves to the possibility of new fans – me being one of them of course. 42 acts, over two nights, on 5 stages = a whole lot of dancing, singing, crying, with a healthy dose of soul touching music to keep you entertained. On the first night, with a late start to the evening, I was blown away not only by the Cape Town wind at the ‘Bassline’ stage (which was setup outside of the International Convention Centre) but also by the Japanese fusion jazz group – a six man group playing what I’d call dance music, with a very jazzy root. It was impossible not to be mesmerized not only by their energy, but the way in which they got the audience involved, singing hooks, dancing, clapping along and creating a measurable heat out in the open stage (audience by now had to do just about everything not to succumb to the thrashing of the wind). What was most important is how the band didn’t seem bothered nor allowed themselves to be distracted by the wind and sand smacking them about on stage, they never skipped a beat – at one point I saw the saxophonist cough out some dirt only after blowing his instrument to the tunes. The Soil and Pimp Sessions is a vibrant band who transcend any expectations, MC, trumpet,...
Represent ♥’d watching: Hump Day
We hearted it so much. Watch the trailer here. And get the dvd soon as! Warm, moving, funny, down-to-earth, theatrical touches and directed by another fabulously-talented female director (Lynn Shelton), those would be our definitive adjectives. IMDB, we’re disappointed in your rating. We loved both lead actors Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard and a thumbs up to Alycia Delmore too. Naas. Oh ja and make sure to watch the director’s interview if it’s on your...
Represent Review: Alter Route Soweto
Soweto’s left-of-centre youth culture is alive and gathering… Banele Rewo and photographer Tiko Ngobeni hung out this past weekend with Soweto’s brightest young exceptions to the rule. (See our Alter Route Soweto photostory here): We love you….We love you…We love you sang Mothusi Thusi the vocalist, guitarist, flautist …actually, everythingist for the The Layders. This was after the 10 hour concoction of music, visuals, food in a cultural blend that can only be prepared in Soweto. There’s a pile of information available on Soweto for those interested, however nothing can articulate the tingling of senses experienced when Soweto’s multiple subcultures collide in art and expression. On the surface Alter Route Soweto is a gig meant to foster artistic expression within the young urbanites in the city and the peripherals. However one could not avoid noticing the dominance of subtle nuances – such as the drive for success through art, the importance of independence of thought and the buzzing entrepreneurship that defines an “Alter Route individual”. This is a person who believes in creating magic through design and clothing such as Thesis Clothing situated in Dube, Soweto, Thesis is the first choice of wear for an “alter Route individual”. Thesis had a “pop up” shop in one of the rooms of the Burnt House where the event took place and I am eagerly anticipating the next “pop up” anywhere. OB the Vegetarian Chef chopped up ingredients that stuck true to the theme of alter routing from the normal diet of cardboard meat served up at you favourite fast food restaurant. Veggies were served in everything even in the garage turned stage where the“Meat the Veggies” band heated us up to boiling point with their locally produced lounge music served with simmering smooth vocals. Alter Route Soweto is not a gig…it’s more than what the organizers describe as a “ multi-genre, multi-cultural and mix-flavoured brew of celebration for all”. It is more than appreciating a young black operated skateboarding label and apparel design from Krooked. It’s a movement that in the literal sense alters perceptions of Soweto, The City and ultimately the individual. See our Alter Route Soweto photostory here. Words: Banele Rewo Images: Tiko...
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