From Zetina Mosia’s upcoming album “The RoundAbout”, this track: ‘Lately’. We’ve said this before, but the Johannesburg label Iapetus is an exceptional breeding ground for South African artists — remember Fifi the Rai Blaster, Yugen Blakrok, Robo the Technician or Gin i Grindith — with a special mention for Kanif, the producer behind many of the songs.
Review. John Akomfrah’s ‘The Nine Muses’
February 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment
John Akomfrah’s new film, The Nine Muses, continues the powerful cine-cultural tradition inaugurated by the Black Audio Film Collective in Britain in the early 1980s. Similarly to his earlier films, Akomfrah handles archival footage with a profound sensitivity; he does not interrogate the history of migration through the archive, nor pore over ‘celluloid fossils’, rather, as cultural critic Kodwo Eshun has suggested, Akomfrah delicately weaves an archival assemblage, with the care of ‘midwives handling an archival fragment as tenderly as if it were a premature infant.’ [Read more...]
More Benetton Politics
February 6, 2012 By 1 Comment
I swore I wasn’t going to add a thing to the discussion about the idiotic poster campaign by the student/youth wing of South Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance about a future non-racial love-fest. I have remained shtum (yiddish for ‘quiet’) about its horrid aesthetics, its awful family snap-shot quality. (Some have claimed it’s like a Benetton or Calvin Klein commercial which should leave said brands reeling). I have silenced myself in the face of the straight(ened) hair of the black model which, seriously DA students, is insulting. And, of course, I, like many others out there, have been annoyed at the shallowness of their vision of a non-racial future. Here in North America, it’s reported as a “racial furore” and “heated debate”. But then I heard “Q” on CBC radio the other day. And watched CNN yesterday morning. [Read more...]
Cape Town is ‘the most dangerous’ city in Africa
January 26, 2012 By 4 Comments
In the latest of those ubiquitous lists/rankings floating around the web, a Mexican research group has listed the world’s most dangerous cities based on homicide rates. Most of them are from Central and South America — 5 of the 10 most dangerous cities are in Mexico and 40 out of the top 50 are in Latin America. Then this: the most dangerous city outside of South and North America and the Caribbean, is Cape Town at no.34. Two US cities — New Orleans (at no.21) and Detroit (no.30) — beat out Cape Town. But that’s cold comfort. Oh, and the remaining cities from outside the Americas on the list also come from South Africa: Nelson Mandela Bay is at no.41, Durban no.49 and Johannesburg no.50. No other African cities made the list.
The New South African Superstar
January 24, 2012 By 9 Comments
Ten seconds before the New Year’s midnight in a Johannesburg night club the dancing slows down. The patrons are counting down the end of 2011. I am watching all this on SABC 1, the most popular TV channel in South Africa. Once it’s officially a new year, the show cuts into a music video: the first song of 2012. The house beat starts playing. This could be the intro of any South African house song – they differ particularly little from each other. In a black and white video, the South African super star DJ Sbu drives around miming to smooth female vocals. This song is called “Lengoma” and it wasn’t originally a dance song but now it has been remixed by this jovial looking driver. The vocals are sung by Zahara – the new favorite of South African record buying audiences.
Sending South African miners home to die
January 11, 2012 By 3 Comments
Epidemiologist Jonathan Smith is working to complete a documentary called ”They Go to Die,” about the lives of four former mineworkers that were sent home from the mine after contracting TB and HIV in the South African gold mines. The men–like thousands of men each year–are affected by a process known as ‘sending them home to die’ that occurs in the South Africa mining industry, where migrant men who become sick with TB are sent home with little or no continuation of care, follow up, or chemotherapy (despite the fact that medical care is available on the mine premises).
Beginning Workout
December 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Talking about running: some ad people can make any city look good.
Coldplay’s “Paradise”
October 19, 2011 By 3 Comments
Coldplay’s new video for the song “Paradise” was released on the band’s website today. The plot revolves around a man dressed in an elephant suit (it later turns out to be Chris Martin inside the suit) who escapes from a zoo in London and smuggles himself onto a plane to Cape Town. With few exceptions there are no real people in this elephant suit’s world. Mr Elephant buys a unicycle in Cape Town (Woodstock to be specific, guess Tom) and heads out to the Boland/Karoo where he meets up with 3 other elephants (his band members). They get transported to a stage in front of a massive crowd–turns out in Johannesburg–and play out the song. Paradise indeed.
Everybody and their cousin has something to say about it.
We have work to do, so I sent an email around AIAC. Below follows a slightly edited version of our conversation:
Tom: Paradise is Cape Town’s central business district, a Woodstock bicycle shop and giraffes in game parks.
Sean: Is this Coetzee’s Eden or am I giving them [Coldplay and the video's director] too much credit?
