Creative Cape Town

photo cropped from a Yasser Booley original

@ various venues across the city
September 28 – October 2

Once a year, Pan African Space Station studios opens its doors for a month-long music intervention including the broadcast of live, online radio, a week of live music events and creative and social exchanges that blur borders and build the creative community.  The message is gaining momentum : PASS is not a product; it’s a process.

The one thing you feel profoundly on stepping into the studios in The Africa Centre at 44 Long Street is its warmth. Whether you know someone or not, whether the room is filled or there’s only one Deejay on duty, there’s a sense of welcome that is infectious and feels like home.

The radio show hosts a variety of participants, from workshopping musicians to musicology professors. A vibrant and diverse programme pumps out 24/7 for the whole month. Some of the highlights included live shows from the likes of experimental guitarist, Righard Kapp, and the ‘screening’ of the audio from the entire Woodstock documentary.

It is a space that tends to erupt spontaneously. Sometimes it’s flooded with cushions and children’s laughter, other times it becomes a disco dancefloor. A sense of the organic filters through even in the live in-studio performances, many of which were punctuated with the delighted screams of little girls and big ones.

The live gigs were held at diverse venues including the Slave Church on Long Street, Guga S’thebe, Langa and Woodstock’s Albert Hall (which has now sadly closed its doors on live music performances). Seeing music in spaces usually reserved for worship infused a contrast that rendered the performances of the unique acts even more outstanding. We enjoyed the many facades of the light fingered guitar legend, and the original space cadette, Dr. Philip Tabane, who, in the opinion of the festival’s co-curator, Neo Muyanga, “has managed to be like nobody, sound like nobody and be copied by nobody.”   We were both blown away and bemused by the bizarre and beautiful compositions of art/opera rockers ‘Studio Kabako More More More… Future’ in The City Hall who reminded me of David Bowie and Luciano Pavaroti cut up and cooked on an awesome African sonic Pizza. The Imperial Tiger Orchestra had us dancing the night away with a delinquently brilliant mix of elemental jazz and indigenous elements from across the world. My favourite, though, was The Kyle Sheppard Trio with Kyle Sheppard (piano, vocals), Shane Cooper (double bass) and Jonno Sweetman (drums) at St. George’s Cathedral, 30^th September.

A moody, fluid set, it tripped and looped in its piano led pathways of the subconscious, and curled up in columns to the unseeable ceiling where it collected in the concave arches, transforming them, almost, into ribs with the music its breath, giving body to silence, and song to darkness. It sounds strange to say it, but I was glad to see the back of Kyle Shepperd that night. That’s because it was one of the spots that sounded sweet; the acoustics are not great for live, plugged music in the Cathedral.  You can see that the musicians like each other; their onstage energy is easy and intuitive, Shane rubbing that double bass like it was a feverish child’s back; Kyle plucking at the piano strings inside the baby grand like he wanted to pull it apart and play with the pieces, Jonno joining everything with impeccable rhythm and an almost pained grin that immediately conjured up beach and surf and sun. Some songs went a fair way to showcasing the glamorous side of Goema, an indigenous sound if ever there was one, rather than the glaring glitz we commonly associate with the Minstrel’s Carnival. A heavenly gig.  A celestial festival. African Space Cadettes indeed!

P.A.S.S. it along and find out more