🎭 Culture South Africa
‘There are no barriers in the music’: The Savoy Ellingtons and H.B. Barnum
Last month, a 90-year-old arranger who once worked alongside Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra and The Supremes stood in the Cradle of Humankind, a Unesco World Heritage Site in Gauteng, and conducted jazz. H.B. Barnum was in South Africa for the first time for the Our Origin Festival, held at Kromdraai Impact Hub in Krugersdorp from 16 to 18 October. With him were The Savoy Ellingtons, siblings Edward and April Ellington, who carry one of music’s heaviest surnames and were als…
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‘There’s no such thing as apolitical music’: Siyabonga Mthembu on democracy, citizenship and Ngeke!
The first time I heard The Brother Moves On, they were on stage performing Good Times. The song is a gradually building experiment in theatrical storytelling that feels impossible to categorise. Is it jazz, rock, funk or folk music? It’s all of the above and none of them. Frontman Siyabonga Mthembu narrates the story, in first person, of a miner who takes his first pay check from toiling underground directly to the tavern to celebrate, buying beers for himself and others aro…
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The culture of mediocrity ends
Even the top performing municipalities in South Africa are not consistent in spending money that is already physically given to them for capital projects. Poor performance by municipalities belies the fact that for more than 150 years project management and engineering have been core skills in RSA with world class universities focusing on those disciplines including UCT, US, UWC, CPUT, WITS, UP, UKZN, UJ and many more. No single municipality in South Africa has consistently…
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