Creative Cape Town

We’ve fallen for Esperanza, sung along with Youssou and been wowed by Wayne Shorter, Hubert Laws, Christian Scott, Dave Ledbetter and others. Behind the scenes, The Cape Town International Jazz Festival started a week before the event already, with an accredited arts journalism course run by established arts writer, Gwen Ansell.

Populated with 20 aspiring and engaged TV, radio, print and pixel reporters including a Carte Blanche researcher and writer and two Daily Maverick freelancers , the course had its cadets up at the early hours on both sides of the sun for an entire week before the festivities even began.

Creative Cape Town went along and discovered the delights of seeing through the eyes and fingertips of fellows from as far as Malawi, Paris and India. Here are individual accounts of two major city calendar events that coincided in the March madness,  the Cape Town Carnival and the Cape Town Festival…

AT THE CARNIVAL

Long Street wasn’t long enough for the amount of hot and sweaty people crammed to the city horizon on Saturday night. Children lined rooftops, bar balconies overflowed, people stood on bins and bus stations, climbed up shop security shutters, anything to elevate themselves above the masses.

From my carnival cupboard I wore a one-piece South African flag overall to camouflage into the carnie spirit. On my tiptoes I peaked at the performers beyond the metal railings, but I wanted more.

I wormed my way through the crowds to a building being refurbished, climbed the scaffolding, jumped on top of a media container, and climbed down onto the road.

I took hundreds of photos of people on stilts, on floats and on each other. My face ran into a fist when a stamped of florescent gum boot dancers charged down Long Street.

DJ fresh wasn’t so fresh, glowing under an enormous disco ball, with similar contours to his head,  but he still had the crowd begging, “Encore, we want more,” at midnight.

I wasn’t in Cape Town for the World Cup. But I got that warm fuzzy feeling of one love, unity, the new South Africa and all that jazz, at the Cape Town Carnival. Even if it was for just the night.

But while we still sweep the glitter of pavements, postmodern hippy naysayers moan that it was too middle-class, too commercial, too clean, and make parallels to the Cape Minstrel’s festive which is supposedly far more “real”  .

Yes it was as sterile as a babies bum, and it didn’t smell like a carnival. No one tried to sell me mushroom and I didn’t have a fruit fight or kiss a Brazilian backpacker. But so what.

The floats were incredible, the dancers bounced around like Energizer bunnies and everything just worked. That’s what differentiated this city from the rest of the country, or continent for that matter. Cape Town positions itself as Africa for beginners, and the carnival was of a world class standard to a tourist such as myself.  The streets were confetti free by the early hours of Sunday morning, and taxis ran people home on time, almost.

Words :Yusuf Omar, www.omargosh.com

Cape Town Carnival 2011- (c) Yusuf Omar

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The Carnival on Long Street grew louder as I walked along with the moving crowd. People on both sides of the street cheered as the performers danced and moved in the middle of the road. I, too, became part of the crowd, singing and cheering along with them. People dressed in the brightest of colours with and some wore masks.

Fear which first crept in was now fading away as I too was drenched in the mood of the evening. The sound of the drum beat and saxophone mixed with the mad cheering was an altogether different song.

Ishita Parekh, Student of Masters in Arts Journalism, CEPT, Ahmedabad, India.

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Long Street was not what I saw it as yesterday. The streetscape has transformed with many colours, sounds and also with sheer number. Unlike its everyday hustle bustle of café goers and shoppers, today the barricaded street was filled with viewers – colourful, glittering viewers… all trying to secure the best vantage point to see the carnival procession; converting each detail of the streetscape to their advantage. They were all over windowsills, up the lampposts, over each other.

Loud, drunken cheers greeted each float of the carnival and drowned the music. The overwhelming density, noise, colours and the glitter dominate my memory of the carnival today.

Words :Nisha Nair,  Student of Masters in Arts Journalism, CEPT, Ahmedabad, India

They turned on a giant radio in the sky of Long street on Saturday night. Arms and legs and heads bobbed and bumped and boogied while the crowd sang like life was a perpetual shower.

Under his glowing disco ball, DJ Fresh, his face contoured like the phantom of the opera, played another of everybody’s favourite songs. “In my home town… yah!” shrieked my friend M to the high rise noise.

I found myself pressed against the wall of a wife beater wearing giant’s back and his bald girlfriend scowled at me. I sang along to songs I wish I didn’t know.

And when someone stole my wallet Yusuf brought me a shot of garlic tequila at Bob’s Bar. There was a full super moon that night.

Words : Theresa Taylor, Polymath supreme, www.theresataylor.co.za

It was a must-see show – the young and the old were all there as they gathered to witness one of the biggest entertainment shows on the day – the Cape Town Carnival.

Fans started trickling in numbers and by 8pm, Long Street was full of people.

Ladies were beautifully dressed so too were some gentlemen, some were in pubs partying enjoying music which ranged from House to Kwaito and R&B.

Pubs surely cashed in from the carnival while shops surely made money as fans searched for bottles of cold water and soft drinks.

The displays among others saw men and women ride on motor cycles, display their dancing skills and another group showcasing their prowess in playing instruments.

The performances also proved one thing to the audience – the dances were different and some were even reminded of late Brenda Fassie’s songs.  There were also dances from India – so this was a platform of all dances and even a cultural exchange.

Random interviews conducted during the carnival saw people expressed their excitement with the event.

“I have really enjoyed this whole thing, the music, the displays it’s so fantastic,” said one fan.

Another one said it has been a longtime since she witnessed such a carnival and that this time around she made sure she was present and did not miss out.

Efforts to talk to the organizers proved futile Saturday night as all were involved in the displays which one of the people said were well organized and that those involved made thorough preparations.

After the displays had finished, fans took to the streets to have fun with others taking photographs while others joined those in the pubs to continue the fun, drinking and jiving.

The carnival ended peacefully and there was no violence as the organizers stepped up security by hiring enough police officers who were all over checking on people.

Words :Sam Banda Jnr, Arts journalist, Blantyre, Malawi

AT THE FESTIVAL

It was carnival day, and Glen Miller swept onto the stage in a bright yellow shirt at the Free Community Gardens Concert, looking bespectacled and suave, an old hand at covering the stages that most old-timers would have turned down. A free concert for the community is not the place to gain exposure to a CD-consuming public, or to be spotted by music industry gophers, and so he was there earning his bread in much the same way as the beer tent behind the stage operated, product-for-cash.

As the Glen Robertson Jazz Band started their sound-check, two of the local park-dwellers had already begun to dance. Clive, his bald head spattered with sweat, extended his arms, hands clasped together with pointed fingers forming a revolver of delight which he shot off at regular intervals. When the actual music began, he was totally enveloped, swaying and weaving in ecstasy. His toothless friend Parker came joined in and they did a little “call-and-response” together. “I like it too much!” roared Clive. “I’m not married!” laughed Parker. Clive and Parker were the only two drunk enough to brave the vicious sun. While this dance-off was going on, the band tried their hardest to impress the public.

The saxophonist began to solo, but as he ascended to the higher registers, either the limitation of his lungs, of the sound engineer, or of his instrument became apparent, and the music became thin and muted. Wherethe saxophonist had speed and dexterity, the keyboard player did not, and the band quickly left him behind. His contribution was exciting, because it was like watching a man tread a tight-rope, or the edge of a cliff. When would he fall?

I breathed a sigh of relief as they wandered into the head out without disaster, and Glen crooned his way through the chorus of this original standard, la-la-ing to the oriental mode on which the melody was based. As the keyboardist began a Santana cover, playing the guitar solo on his inflectionless keyboard, I got up to go and see what else Cape Town’s streets had to offer on carnival night.

Words :Douglas McCutcheon, musicology student and musician