sounds like

something struck me

it's a common compulsion to identify 'influences' in music - even if they aren't there. 'sounds like artcic monkeys, ya. though she says she's never heard them even.'

it's even more common to dismiss music that seems to mimic other music. 'ohmygod. do they KNOW they're (insert trendy band) derivatives?'

my question is, isn't it more important whether someone is enjoying a sound than whether it's been done before, done better, or overdone?

you can't expect everyone to be a sound snob, you know.

(it's true that i might have written this in hopes of hiding the fact that i listened to Celine Dion on repeat when i was 17, or at least to absolve my deep sense of guilt about it, but actually, i just want us to stop a minute and think about the real beauty of music - it's not how' good' it is, it's how good it is for the listener. it's true of course that music is fighting to be heard and that the masses have managed to have pretty lame taste (and we're not too sure who's to blame, but we'll blame the media in the meantime), but next time you hear someone listening to what you think is a kak band or solo artist, maybe introduce them softly to your sonic heroes, instead of looking down your musically literate nose at them. (and use it for sniffing out new sound, too)

it brings to mind something that PASS says

that music is a meeting place...

Pan African Space Station / redefine Africa /

The Pan African Space Station Festival has logged off. The opening of October saw four days swimming in a celebration of sound that reached so far, it redefined 'African'. I caught 3 of its shows and cried twice.

My first gig, the War Chorale, was what i'll call the developmental leg of the fest - an accomplished composer conducting a youth choir and orchestra. At the entrance it sounded like hell let loose (which is ironic, because it was held at St. George's Cathedral, and you have to wonder how many crimes were committed in Africa in the name of god), but once inside, it subsided into experimental forays of choral song and jazz arrangements. Bheki Khoza composed and directed the Chorale, with a sense of humour and a sense of timing, throwing improv at everyone like the party trick that it is. Pity his poor students seemed to have neither, and often gulped like guinea pigs before launching into the moment he'd prompted them to be part of. The pianist was captivating, the combination of genres intriguing, but the sound rig was substandard, and we did try moving around to find the live spot in the sound. No luck. A strange experience. But great to see an investment in young talent and expose it to a mature audience.

The second i nearly missed. I knew Toumani Diabate was coming to town for this fest, but i did not care to sit through another session of bad sound at the Cathedral. Luckily a wise friend convinced me otherwise, pointing out that one instrument is a lot simpler to project into an empty vault than a whole choir and orchestra are...and that was when i met the kora.

The kora is an African instrument that makes the harp look half-hearted and overdressed. It's body is a calabash covered in skin. Its neck has 21 strings made of something as simple as fishing line. You play them with 4 fingers. Base. Melody. Improv. 4 fingers! It's beautiful.

Toumani is master of his instrument, 71st in his family line. His compositions are compellingly meditative, his demeanour doubly so. He jibes the audience with a subtle chuckle when he's not chaneling what he terms divine inspiration (and it really looks like it, and wasn't that ironic, again, in Jesus's dad's house, a Moslem man making god sing. Man, Ntone and Neo are clever with their venue choices. Music as meeting place for the reinterpretation of space. music as medium, more than message. because you are the message. and i am because you are). It also feels like divine inspiration. So when a fellow kora player and his wife (whom i'd been watching battleto tempt a two year old away from the stage) joined the the maestro and 42 strings and her voice rang out over the congregation in sounds i've never heard, i cried. i haven't ever felt that much love on a stage. and then the bloody lights came on again. sigh. mop mop. escape. was supposed to see the revellators after, but the bar they were playing at said they wouldn't get started till 1am at which time i am already a witch.

Last one was @ Gugu s'thebe in Langa. It doesn't take long to get to Langa. Just past the poo towers. (what else can we call them? for years i thought they were filled with sewage from the stench. And why don't the taggers go and do their deeds there, i wonder? they're so grey and bare they could use some decoration). Udaba are simple and outspoken, quite literally - spoken word, singing, and melodic, rhythmic arrangements i can't quite recall now. It made me dance. Then on came one sweaty mama armed with an electric guitar that's more ornamental than instrumental and her beaded, brilliant virgins (well, one looked like a nypmh, actually, but i'm letting good novels dictate the terms of my perception now). Energetic singing, superfly dancing for a really long time. Nice. Nothembi Mkhwebane. Then The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, all the way from Chicago. 8 brothers, 1 cousin, brass to the max, hip hop overlaps, some cinematic overtures and digging hips. A whole gloop of happy young boys jumped up on stage and joined in, rapping, clapping, yowling. And when they closed their set by singing us nkosi sikelele, again the tears.

Sentimental cynic, aren't i?

PASS, big up for bringing Africa to the fairest Cape. All round, the richest display of musical diveristy I've seen so far in SA (um, yes, that includes you, Oppi). Only please sort out the sound in The Book Centre and St George's Cathedral for next year. I wasn't the only one it spoiled the show for.

You can catch podcasts on the website and check out the archives from last year's show. http://www.panafricanspacestation.org.za/index.php also videos and the usual stuff we spoilt web surfers expect from our online experience. what did Nikhil call it this morning? the remote control existence.

Do you know the words?

ssss. here. learn.

Zulu Version

Nkosi, sikelel' iAfrika,
Malupnakanyisw' udumo lwayo;
Yizwa imithandazo yethu
Nkosi sikelela,
Nkosi sikelela,

Nkosi, sikelel' iAfrika,
Malupnakanyisw' udumo lwayo;
Yizwa imithandazo yethu
Nkosi sikelela,
Nkosi sikelela,

Woza Moya (woza, woza),
Woza Moya (woza, woza),
Woza Moya, Oyingcwele.
Usisikelele,
Thina lusapho lwayo.

p.s. ten points for anyone who gives me a decent definition of an afro-ponce...or a funny one. But that's probably too easy, and all you've had to do till now is read....

Brand Your Band - hors d'oeuvres

A taster on some of the content covered at Brand Your Band expo

@ The Assembly 61 Harrington Street Cape Town

26th September 2009

11am-3pm

Directed and Edited by Angela Ramirez & Jess Henson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23B0pMrniFA

more at http://capemic.co.za/

website: www.capemic.co.za

Twitter : http://twitter.com/BrandYourBandSA

Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=128672711713&ref=ts

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

Giants and Gnomes

Ghosts flitter. Liquid drops. A hive-honeyed hum. The pierce and punch of a trumpet.

Once upon a time there was a slave church, and it filled each week with the worship of the unwanted. Between every pulpit Sunday it filled with silent screams of stolen spirit. And when one day there were no more slaves, it fell silent.

The ghosts stayed.

And then.

Came the prisoners of strange.

And because men play with life like it is a toy, they played with toys and brought them to life. Slowly the bewitched filled the gallery.

We looked up because there is heaven in it.
We sat up straight because there is god in us.
we moved because the ghosts were moving.

And we all let Mr Mombelli, Marcus, Mr. martin and Siya syncopate our souls with the rhythm of the Under. Snappily. Tightly. Moodily. Magically. Ever after.

Tell me the colour of the ceiling, and I’ll tell you if your ears were open.

p.s. There are still slave churches. But the dominee is within.