after robots

image originally by monica orozco (colour treated by jezebel)

we deserve the Blk Jks, i think. they belie our kak with their capricious layers of rapid fire rhythm and sweet melody. they belittle our overblown egos with their absolute creative immersion. what a lekker earful. heartful. soulful.

tsk tsk

photo : mikael subotsky

tsk tsk, blk jks. four men of colour on the run (for doing what you please and giving everyone The Finger while you're at it...)

...sounds like the future...

click on blk jks tag below for more...

Lua Union. driven and down to earth.

I had a 'once in a while’ the other night. Actually, it's been a week of those. What next, I wonder? (Battle of the bands finals next, jezebel. type FASTER.)

It started with a public holiday with no holiday and no public in it (prepping for Brand Your Band expo while everyone else was drinking and braaing), moved into a quick trek to Stellies (my new favourite escape), and stumbled upon Stack Shot Jack at Aandklas shooting their mouths off superbly. No, their strings. They wowed me. a timeless jam at the end of their set was the cherry on top that chopped out my doubt for now. It’s a tricky thing with them- and an unusual one – I’ve seen them live 3 times. Sometimes they seem unspecial, and other times superlative, but it’s beyond my ability to figure out why. Either something is wrong with my ears, or the prescient rule that music is emotive must be re/applied. Why? because we are emotional creatures (ok, some are), so we respond to rhythms and melodies kin to our feelings, but ears, for all their attentiveness, are also slow to HEAR. I mean to hear, with heart, with soul. So sometimes a little settling in is necessary, to get to the source of a sound. It's not so strange that music goes well with wine, really, because it is like wine - sometimes it takes time, and in some cases, it's even an acquired taste. Blk Jks (our best export since Johnny Clegg and Juluka), is my best example- first time I heard Molalatladi, I thought Jaxon (Rice of The Diesel Whores) was mad to dub them the future sound of South Africa (in the next issue of Muse). When it took hold, there was no looking back, and no letting go. I was sold. Blk Jks. IN. Stack Shot Jack? ConfusIN. Anyway, they're enjoying themselves so much, they'll hold their own and outgrow my doubts very soon, I suspect. I’ll oscillate for a while, because ears are like hearts- sometimes quick, sometimes slow to open. But it was love at first sight with Lua Union. Though i'm repeating myself.

I've mentioned them before. Click the Lua Union tag below (come on, you know how to use web two point oh). Then it was 'toer, two guitars, and tents. We forgot the world for forty truly arty minutes while Dean and Lucas jammed in the lush green campsite and life seemed sweet and simple and important (well, it IS, but it isn't always the first two). You're going to disagree with me until you think about it, but love at first sight requires the irony of integrity. (And the iron of intensity, even if it's soft and switching to sweet all the time, like in Dear Reader). Lua Union has both. What grabbed me on the grass gobbled me at Aandklas. What charmed me in summer, burned me in late winter (what - you call this Spring?!). Grounded and growling. Homely and howling. I can't describe it. And that's a good thing. For now.

Watching them that night made my day. My week. My month. (the year has been a hard one, so we won't quite labour the exaggeration yet.) Lua is driving strings, burnt umber vocals from Dean(e); golden, grounded, glorious vocals from Lucas, and a certain sense of something else that I haven't heard anywhere else. Something that wants more time to be put into words and to find its voice.

Give them time, and they'll be the next best thing.

Give me time, coz I’m late for the battle!

The Lua Union has a Face

And you can listen here

…

p.s. the ‘What Next’ that came next was Heart Shaped Heresy at Battle Of The Bands. Watch this blog for more from a local one woman army soonsoon…(the YesWeCan one is here).. and crib notes on how to (not?) win a Battle…

blk jks global tour dates...

photo : mikael subotsky

POA: first take america, then the world (being from africa, blk jks know that america is not the world...)

ALIVE!!! DATES
BLK JKS / AFTER ROBOTS

ENDLESS WAR / AMERICA EDITION /FALL 2009

8 SEPT / SOBS / NYC…ALBUM PARTY WITH HIGHLIFE! AND JANKA NABAY

12 SEPT / SANTOS / NYC…WITH THEOPHILUS LONDON AND WILD YAKS!

16 SEPT / THE SPOT / CASE WESTERN

17 SEPT / BRASS RAIL /FORT WAYNE

18 SEPT / PYGMALION MUSIC FESTIVAL / CANOPY CLUB / URBANA

19 SEPT / FORWARD MUSIC FEST / ORPHEUM THEATRE / MADISON

20 SEPT / WORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL / BOTTOM LOUNGE / CHICAGO

21 SEPT / WORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL / HIDEOUT / CHICAGO

22 SEPT / THE PIKE ROOM / DETROIT

24 SEPT / GLOBAL ROOTS FESTIVAL / CEDAR CULTURAL CTR / MINNEAPOLIS

26 SEPT / LOTUS FESTIVAL / BLOOMINGTON

29 SEPT / BLACK CAT BACKSTAGE / DC

1 OCT / BARD COLLEGE / NY

2 OCT / WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY / CT

3 OCT / M ROOM / PHILADELPHIA

4 OCT / TT THE BEARS PLACE / BOSTON

6 OCT / BACKBOOTH / ORLANDO

7 OCT / CAFE ELEVEN / ST AUGUSTINE

8 OCT / COMMON GROUNDS / GAINESVILLE

10 OCT / THIRSTY HIPPO / HATTIESBURG

12 OCT / EMOS / AUSTIN

14 OCT / MODIFIED / PHOENIX

15 OCT / SPACELAND/ LOS ANGELES

y y y y y y y y SF / PORTLAND / SEA / SLC / DENVER

***ANNOUNCING SOON!!!***

29 OCT / HOXTON BAR & KITCHEN / LONDON
30 OCT / SNEAKY PETES / EDINBURG
31 OCT / CLUNY 2 / NEWCASTLE
1 NOV / BRAINWASHED / LEEDS
2 NOV / ISLINGTON MILL / MANCHESTER
3 NOV / ACADEMY 2 / DUBLIN
4 NOV / THE HARLEY / SHEFFIELD
5 NOV / ARTS CENTRE / COLCHESTER
7 NOV / WORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL / OLSO
9 NOV / HALDERN HOTEL / REES-HALDERN
10 NOV / STUDIO 672 / KOLN
11 NOV / KNUST / HAMBURG
12 NOV / MERLYN / NIJMEGEN
13 NOV / VOLKSBÜHNE / BERLIN
15 NOV / EL LOKAL / ZURICH
16 NOV / BAD BONN / DUDINGEN
17 NOV / PALACE / ST GALLEN
18 NOV / SPAZIO 211 / TORINO
19 NOV / INIT / ROME
20 NOV / TETRIS / TRIESTE
21 NOV / AMPERE / MUNICH
23 NOV / KARLSTORBAHNHOF / HEIDELBERG
24 NOV / PARADISO / AMSTERDAM
26 NOV / START THE BUS / BRISTOL
27 NOV / CARDIFF / CARDIFF ARTS INSTITUTE
28 NOV / CONCRETE AND GLASS / LONDON
29 NOV / FREEBUTT / BRIGHTON
2 DEC / TRIX / ANTWERP
5 DEC / TRANSMUSICALES / RENNES

after the devil

[ photo : mikael Subotzky ]

despite desires to remain detached, jezebel is slipping very smoothly (and quite excitedly) into a relationship with Blk Jks' debut album.

between roodebloem and paarden island, between long street and the long walk home, they're finding my heartbeat, my backbeat, my undercurrents. slipping, humming. stripping, strumming. and i'm finding that jaxon is right. this is the future sound of south africa. from the inside. not to the outside.

after robots starts off a bit calamitous (ka-LA- m'TUSS. say it slowly till it's comes easily, and then spit it out swiftly.

CaLamitous .

that's because it's molalatladi - the difficult one of the bunch, hard-to-get but possibly, in time, the most-loved, most memorable and meaningful one.

nomvula is a chuck on the chin to zolani. a ballad. a dirge.

cursor is kind. within reason.

and the vocals. aaaah. the vocals inter a change of gender from line to line - inflections you only notice on reflection. maybe the vocals never really stay inside the gender barrier in the first place. they're so subtle about it (simple, unaffected, naked chords).

and chippity chop, they mash it up. timelines, basslines, breadlines. a flash of jimi. a twang of township. guitars testy like trumpets. casual stabs at classical. stitched with the loose lyricism and unformed edginess of unclaimed territories. the future in your ears. the past in your palm. yes. after robots. pap you can eat with chopsticks.

so, go know.

the walls are watching.

the world is waiting.

(and hang on to your footballs, blk jks. you are starting a sonic cyclone, i suspect.... )

There’s a lesson in the Pan

[image courtesy of blk jks]

“Everything is everything
What is meant to be, will be
After winter, must come spring
Change, it comes eventually”

- Lauryn Hill

In music, the simplest components can be the most profound, or problematic. In language, too.

Short words like god and love tend to have a long list of meanings, whether they stand alone or are used with other words (like -less and tough-). They generally have even more interpretations, much like patterns in music.

“Pan” has at least 18 different uses, which seems a bit tautologous when most people just think of it as an empty container for cooking or washing. But wait – maybe there’s something singing through the semantics?

In the arts, pan is an unfavourable review or critique;

in PC talk,

PAN is an acronym for Personal Area Network;

aurally,

pan is an acoustic instrument hailing from Trinidad and Tobago, aka Steelpan ;

astronomically,

Pan is a moon off Saturn;

linguistically,

pan- is a prefix for … well, everything. (so Pan-African means… well… a whole continent of lions and elephants and people running around half-dressed, I’d assume?).

But funnily enough,

Pan is also a stinky ancient Greek goatgod that takes pride of place in Tom Robbins novel Jitterbug Perfume, and most of our erotic dreams (though he’s always hidden in the guise of the desired);

and - uh oh - when you get personal about it, pan is also a biological term for a genus of apes composed of the common Chimpanzee and the Bonobo. (I’m not going to follow lingual threads here and tell you that Bonobo is also a British musician, DJ and producer whose NinjaTunes album Days To Come made waves in the west with the help of spoken word from my India-born, African-schooled, Europe-renowned, Deep South-sounding high school best friend Bajka because it’s (ostensibly) got nothing to do with my point. Which is?)

Which is that these different uses of a simple sound have something common. They underline and override many of the assumptions around the Pan African Space Station, better known by in age of ADD as PASS. In addition, they illustrate how the same root can have many shoots, depending on where you plant it. Let’s start with native soil.

Naughty, naughty Africans

With due defiance, The Pan African Space Station is an annual music festival that puts paid to the city of pretty as a post-colonial stronghold of polarised cultures and isolated pigments. Covering the Cape Town peninsula and former marshes and pans, it mixes audiences, areas and artists up in the intended understanding of pan – meaning ‘inclusive’, ‘all’, ‘everything’.

In orbit

Last year the fest bussed people back and forth from townships to town, from suburbs to shack lands, putting people in places they’d never been, including some of the country’s and the worlds best musical dissidents. The disarmingly charming and stylistically dangerous Carlo Mombelli (And The Prisoners Of Strange) got a standing ovation in the slave church, the visionary acoustic guitarist Madala Kunene gave his all in the dark, the globe trotting, genre-and-grammar-ducking blk jks did their thing their way, and the belle of them all, Cindy Blackman (great name, hey?)graced us with her good looking drum kit. PASS turned wish lists into playlists, made people listen without light, dance in the studio, and helped them discover that what’s really dark about our continent is the ignorant attitudes towards it.

Personal area network?

But it’s not all about the music. On the cutting edge of digital penetration and implicit accessibility, Pan African Space Station exploits first world technology to create a third world for entertainment– a seam between the poles of the mainstream and the underground that inspires public consumption of artistic integrity. Besides a brilliantly diverse line-up, it achieves this by broadcasting free over licensed radio (that’s not a cheap feat to pull off), offering podcasts of live performances, creating a meeting place for people of like mind and action, and making a public service announcement which reminds us of the plausible reality in Steve Biko’s promise that “in time, we shall be in a position to bestow on South Africa the greatest possible gift - a more human face”

This year’s gifts include Malian Kora maestro Toumani Diabaté; 9-piece, Chicago-based Hypnotic Brass Ensemble; Ras G and the Afrikan Space Program on location in the Western Sahara ; Cameroonian Franck Biyong and his Massak Afrolectric Orchestra; Ghanaian 'afro-pidgin-punk' Wanlov the Kubulor.

And getting back to fifty ways to leave your lover, whatever your definition of ‘good music’ is, the Pan African Space Station could broaden it, by design, and by definition, which means you only have more to enjoy. So balls to the Bauhaus; less is more no more.

Scour the site for more on this “30-day music intervention”
September 12 - October 12
on air, online and on stages around the Cape Town
Pan African Space Station? See if you can pan it.

http://www.panafricanspacestation.org.za/

“Everything must change
nothing stays the same
everyone will change
no one, no one stays the same”

- Nina Simone

Black humour

Friend Of The Arts, ol’ Pal?

Dear Dr Jordan

It’s interesting that as Minister of the Department of Arts and Culture, you state quite glibly that “The Cape Town International Jazz Festival is about how the people of South Africa stopped thinking of themselves as belonging to different groups and began to see themselves as one African nation whose ancestors happened to come from different continents” in your Public Address on behalf of the Cape Town International Jazz Fest . Your department is concurrenlty establishing initiatives that completely contradict such claims, stratifying open-minded celebrations of diversity. The Department seems intent on curbing press coverage of what has inauspiciously and myopically been dubbed “White Rock”. I thought we'd freed ourselves from mental slavery.

The motions translate tritely. The press and the broader media will not be free to represent musical genres as it sees fit or as its readers and viewers demand, but as government quotas dictate. Ironically, "quotas", here, sounds suspiciously like a synonym for oppression. So much for a free press.

What I'd like to know is, since when did music have colour? Oh yeah. How ignorant of me and my centuries-scarred memory. Since the reign of the Rainbow Nation. But with 14 years of freedom in the bag and uncountable corruption in our coffers, this new approach sounds more like retribution and revenge than reconstruction and reconciliation.

Music appeals to the soul through the emotions, and as such, is one of the few art forms that has a stab at healing the rifts in our realities. Why segregate that?

So touché, Dr Jordan. Jou ma se genre, is all I can say. Bob would be disappointed by your “representation”.

Not Yours
Jezebel ('just another white girl')

p.s. What are you going to do about Blk Jks and Southpaw, I wonder?