South African guitarist Madala Kunene plays at the Cape Town World Music Festival, 2014.
Beanstalk, the company behind the Cape Town World Music Festival (CTWMF), had another go at the festival this year. This is after the CTWMF disappeared from the calendar in 2013. I wrote a preview on the festival which you can read here:
An in-camera double-exposure of kora player, griotess and composer Sona Jobarteh playing at Zanzibar’s Sauti za Busara Festival 2014 © Setumo Thebe Photography
I was in Zanzibar between the 13th and 16th February to make photographs as part of the Sauti za Busara photography team. I used the opportunity to interview this fantastically interesting woman.
Sona Jobarteh by Setumo-Thebe Mohlomi
A view from the crowd at the first ever Mad decent Block Party in Cape Town, South Africa.
This first weekend of February saw Cape Town at its most aurally attention deficit since the beginning of 2014. There was a mid-city electronic music festival running from Friday to Sunday; as well as a performance by a Grammy nominated Kendrick Lamar in Belleville falling on the same day as the Mad Decent Block Party on Sunday. Superficially, the weekend was a three-way duel for the ears and pockets of audiences between sSHADOWORKSs and Red Bull who are in the third year of putting on the Cape Town Electronic Music Festival (CTEMF), Airey Scott and Miller Boomtown’s Kendrick Lamar performance, and Seed Experiences and Ol Meca Tequila’s Mad Decent Block Party.
An audience member exhales and marvels at the Made Decent Block Party branding.
At a more significant level, these were three events facing their own individual challenges and each with different lifespans. For example, the CTEMF is an annual event which showcases local and international electronic music, and this year they faced the task of relocating their festival from the rooftop of the Breakwater parking garage at the V&A Waterfront to the Grand Parade in the city centre. Festivals and events that relocate either make it, or they fall into irrelevance, with their websites sometimes adding to the internet garbage heap.
At the end of the Major Lazer headlined Mad Decent Block Party not far from the Grand Parade, Dj Walshy Fire says ‘Thank you Cape Town, see you next year’. Whether the Mad Decent Block Party will be staged again in 2015 is a mystery, one which can be partially solved by measuring the popularity of Major Lazer and other Mad Decent record label artists a year from now.
Sibot creates a song live on stage while Toyota works on the stage’s visual display.
Sibot’s is a production and performance career which has seen raging popularity and near obscurity in unpredictable portions. To his credit, though, he has often managed to carve out a niche for his ever-changing musical penchants. His performance at the Mad Decent Block Party connected with an audience who were learning their musical vowels when he was making his iconic Super Evil hit. Dressed in all black, with a black mask pinned with a handful of eyes, Sibot played a live set which showcased his experience without alienating his audience.
Flosstradamus gave the audience a taste of what to expect from the main act with their energetic performance. The duo from the windy city had the venue bouncing gingerly on its toes and made thoughts of the, by then imminent, rain irrelevant. J2K, the mic swinger of the duo, spent most of their set on the same table Diplo would pulverise during the Major Lazer set.
Dilion Francis followed the Flosstradamus set and brought the atmosphere down by two notches. The unfortunate thing about Moombahton music, which is an interesting melange of raggaeton and house music, is that it is often difficult to carry an entire set with that one genre, in South Africa at least. Dilion Francis’s set could have used more diversity, more research on the likes and dislikes of the Cape Town crowd.
The Major Lazer dancers strike a pose during their energetic performance.
In the early 1990s Buju Banton released a song called Batty Rider which extolled the nyash of a woman who wears the wears shorts that show the most of her gluteus maximus. At the Mad Decent Block Party word had gotten around that the batty rider was to be the uniform for the women in attendence. Batty riders and the eyes ogling them moved closer to the stage as preparations were being hastily made for the main act. The Major Lazer stage team can not be commended enough for shortening the time between the opening acts and main act. Their professionalism became the opening act, it showed what kind of professionalism was to be expected from Major Lazer.
For an act with scores of hits stretching over a five year trajectory, it would have been very easy for Major Lazer to play their hits and go back home. Instead of that, Diplo, Jillionaire, and Walshy Fire came on stage in suits that they were planning to discord soon after, along with two dancers that had more wine in their waists than the best Cape Merlot.
Their high-octane set included some incredibly rare dubplates. For those clueless of the dancehall world, a dubplate in this genre is a recording of a songs vocals with the name of the selector who comissioned that dubplate inserted at the most appropriate moments. There are some DJs who only voice dubplates on very rare occasions. Damian Marley and Konshens belong to that group of artists. Major Lazer played dubplates from each of these artists as well as from RDX and the latest raggae cliche Snoop Lion. Their set also included Elephant Man and Mavado remixes which got disappointingly placid receptions from the crowd.
The front row of the crowd carry Major Lazer cutouts and most of the audience are carrying some kind of inflatable.
If Major Lazer’s entire set had been put on mute, it would have been entertaining for the carnivalesque fanfare that was part of their show. There were streamers, smoke machines, inflatable toys, shirts flung in the air and some cued dance moves for the crowd to make the Major Lazer act thoroughly entertaining from minute one to curtain call. When the ears had had their fill and the eyes tired of ogling the spectacle, and spectacular bums on display, only then could Cape Town weigh up the pros and cons of joining Diplo et al at the official afterparty at Fiction on Long Street.
Members of the audience sing the South African national anthem at the A Life Celebrated concert to commemorate the life of Nelson Mandela. © Setumo Thebe Photography
The phrase “we sing when we are happy, we sing when we are sad” has become a trite shorthand for journalists, local and international, to describe the seemingly bonhomous atmosphere after the passing of Nelson Mandela on Thursday, December 5 2013. It is lamentable that local media pundits have failed to put this phrase into any kind of context, and have used it by and large as an immutable explanation for the way in which South Africans are mourning.
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The definitive turn-around moment of the memorial service came when Khanyo Maphumlo sang the lines “The year 1963/The people’s president/ Was taken away by security men/ All dressed in a uniform/ The brutality, brutality/ Oh no, my, my black president”.
Read the full article here: http://www.mahala.co.za/culture/mourning-song
Francois van Coke sings at a benefit concert held to raise funds for the Saartjie Baartman women and children shelter in Cape Town, South Africa. © Setumo Thebe Photography
The event took place in aid of the Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children (SBCWC), which like so many other NGOs struggles to stay afloat for the lack of funding. It is a little ironic that a centre which has seen countless battered and abused women and children walk in and out of its doors would be the beneficiary of a physical and aural punch up.
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By the time their performance reached the half-way mark the drummer Jacobus “Snakehead” Venter’s dripping sweat threatened to drown the ring and lead vocalist Francois van Coke looked like he was struggling with a dislocated thumb from his antics.
Fokopolisiekar at The Armoury Boxing Club by Setumo-Thebe Mohlomi
Dwayne Anling of The Wailers, Trinity 2012
RhinoProtect is a platform which can be used to access information in the rhino conservation effort.The work that they do requires them to do extensive fundraising. One of their fundraising efforts was a concert called Stand Up! which featured The Wailers (of Bob Marley fame), as well at local act Fox Comet. This April 2012 fundraiser took place at a Cape Town superclub called Trinity.
A couple post a message on a fence close to the houses of parliament in Cape Town, South Africa.
The Right2KNow Campaign is a collaborative effort of people and organisations oppossing the Protection of Information Bill or “Secrecy Bill”. The Bill seeks to criminalise disseminating information declared sensitive by the government. Although security is a primary concern for most states, this bill has been opposed because of the possibility that it will infringe on the media’s right to collect and disseminate information, as well as hold the government accountable for their actions. Find out more about the right to know campaign here: http://www.r2k.org.za
An Upstart member sands down the inside of a shipping container which serves as a kitchen at a local school.
It is a new tradition being formed in South Africa for communities, companies and other organisations to dedicate 67 minutes to social upliftment projects in the name of the first democratic president Nelson Mandela. The call to do 67 minutes of service has been responded to by young and old nationwide. To encourage young Upstarters to recognise and appreciate the importance of communal social upliftment, the Upstart organisation organised a project at a local school in Grahamstown, South Africa. The Upstart team members and the Upstart members invested time rejuvenating a shipping container which acts as a kitchen for making free lunches for the school’s learners. Rhodes University dedicated resources such as gardening equipment, sandpaper, paint and brushes to help make the rejuvenation project a success.
Find out more about Upstart’s projects here: Upstart Youth Programme
Setumo-Thebe Mohlomi 