The Pan African Space Station has come and gone. Its back into orbit till its return next year. This year offered again an excellent lineup of an interesting selection of some of the vast interesting musical talents that Africa and its Diaspora have to offer. PASS is a musical festival that has evolved from the Spier Music Festival held annually at the Spier Estate. But as its new name suggests it has little in common with the initial event, which took place in a large open air auditorium and initially attracted a moneyed audience who could get to a wine estate after dark. Today it is still funded by Spier but organized and promoted under the Africa Centre umbrella.
The Africa Centre has at the core of its mission, the promotion of African Arts and cultural production:
“Based in South Africa, the Africa Centre is both a physical entity and an ongoing philosophical process. It is meant to grow spatially and conceptually over a period of several years, in time it will emerge as a multi-sited, multiple-usage space where the visual, intellectual and performance cultures of Africa, South and North are celebrated, studied and brought to life for diverse audiences in innovative ways.”
In addition to PASS, the Africa Centre hosts: Infecting the City (a site specific performance arts festival), the Badilisha Poetry Exchange, The Spier Contemporary (the largest biennale contemporary art competition) and Sparck (Space for Pan African Research Creation and Knowledge) Last year’s PASS established the festival as an unusual one in many respects. These included using a wide variety of unusual venues such as the Slave Museum on Long Street, The St. Georges Cathedral and Guga S’thebe for its main events. The 4 days of festival were preceded by and ended with a month long internet radio station. The station hosted a wide variety of DJs, musicians and storytellers in its studio at 44 Long Street and attracted every night a diverse group of characters who hung around spoke and listened. But definitely the most interesting thing about PASS was its lineup: Kora maestro Toumani Diabate; Queen of Ndebele music, guitarist Nothembi Mkhwebane; 9-piece, Chicago-based jazz troubadours Hypnotic Brass Ensemble; Cameroonian funk-master Franck Biyong and his Massak Afroletric Orchestra; Zanzibar’s legendary taarab orchestra and social club, the Culture Musical Club; Ras_G & the Afrikan from his El-Ay, Western Sahara space base; and Ghanaian Pidgin rapper Wanlov the Kubulor. The event included specially commissioned collaborations like the War Chorale with Bheki Khoza. Every night participants were invited to continue the experience with DJs at the All Nations venue in Salt River.
The two curators of PASS working under the title of Heliocentrics are Ntone Edjabe and Neo Muyanga, who “work with sound, space, situation, word and image”. Ntone is well known for his editing of the cutting edge journal – Chimurenga, while Neo is an acclaimed musician who has recorded solo as well as with the popular group, Blk Sunshine. Together they have steered the Pan African Space Station to great heights and have assembled a solid team of volunteers and collaborators around the project.
Neo can be experienced in the incredible Jazzart Dance Theatre production partly god. This contemporary dance piece by one of the top contemporary dance companies in the country is on at Artscape till Sunday 25 October. Neo composed and performs the music with a ensemble of great musicians. Directed by Laura Foot, the piece focuses on powerful themes of violence, trauma and change through sound, poetry and music. While it has a universal message, its vision is a strongly African one. The piece adds to the growing exploration of the African continent by artists from Cape Town and is a must see.
The Central City is also home to two important Africa focused development networks –The Arterial Network and The African Arts Institute (AFAI). Both are under the leadership of Mike Van Graan , a highly regarded arts administrator and playwright, who was also the convener of the recent World Summit on Arts and Culture in Jozi. The Arterial Network is “an informal, dynamic network of individuals, institutions and funding partners working to support the effectiveness and growth of African arts and culture in civil society and to enhance the sustainability of creative industries in Africa” and was formed in Senegal in March 2007. The network is managed by AFAI. Check out the Arts in Africa website set up to promote the creative industries in Africa. It is planned as a “one stop portal for information about the arts in Africa listed by country as well as discipline. It includes information on UNESCO branches, Funding Agencies, E-newsletters, Cultural Policy, Creative Industries, Events, Conferences, Training Institutions and civil society organisations among others.”
Badilisha! Poetry X-Change an international poetry project forms part of the Africa Centre. For the past 5 years poets from around the world and across the African continent have been featured at its annual festival, engaged with wider audiences and local poetry networks via dynamic interactions in the form of workshops, discussions and multi-media collaborations. Badilisha! Poetry X-Change is adding a new dimension to its live poetry project and will soon launch BadilishaPoetry.com an online poetry radio station which will produce weekly podcasts of poets from Africa and the Diaspora. A blog will facilitate relevant poetry discussions and open the way for continued conversation amongst poets featured on the podcasts, greater exposure of the work of African poets to the world and to each other. Weekly shows will be presented by South African writer and performance poet Malika Ndlovu. At its Africa Day celebration on 25th May, guest poet Uche Nduka reminded everyone that “Africa is alive wherever Africans are living.” “In this spirit, BadilishaPoetry.com aims to encourage, expose and celebrate the work of African and Diaspora poets, answering to the need for an Africa-centred platform where these African voices and works from all over the globe can be accessed and enjoyed, as well as serving as a networking space for these artists within and beyond the literary arena.” Malika Ndlovu is making a callout for submissions for its new podcasting platform which should be up and running by end November. Email: malikan@africacentre.net or presenter@badilishapoetry.com
illilibrerb
August 30th, 2010
I would like make more friends here & talk something interestings.