This short piece, in so many ways, from how it was made to what Roy MacGregor (former cinematographer) and I had to edit with – that which was shot through Rupert’s eyes, as part of his initiation to low-fi, hi-love video production under the tutorship of Dr Droom Voodo (aka Sifu Roy) himself!
The apartment featured here is where I’d been staying the past few weeks in Cape Town… working from there with guitars on the tear all and night…
Review: Restless Natives, Armchair Theatre, Cape Town, 21 Feb 2008
I may be destined to conduct most my conversations about music with taxi drivers in Cape Town. Not only has every driver I’ve met come from a traditional music background, they ask questions! There are few musicians I’ve met in Cape Town that have inquired about my own work. Once I’m gone, and if they’re curious, they may find a fraternity of taxi drivers who have some insight to a swag of my interests, work practices and humble achievements.
That aside, I want to spend the rest of these moments we have together to share with you my experience of the South African free jazz group, Restless Natives. I had it on good authority that their performance at the Armchair Theatre in Observatory, Cape Town, on the night of the 21st of Feb, was not to be missed and I can assure you, would not be forgotten!
The Armchair Theatre is a rather informal venue with little seating, but plenty of floor space for squatting and a foosball table that got a fair bit of use. I was advised by the bar staff that the band would start at 10. I’d been in Observatory since 6, so by 9:55 I was pretty eager to have my ears done in. The conversation around me was stifling to say the least.
Sure enough, at 10pm, the Restless Natives took to the stage and got stuck into the business of being restless and relentless from start to finish. It was exhilarating!
Chris Engle, sporting an afro, spat, spluttered, blew his sax like the roaring 40s! Then he’d bury himself in his instrument, hunched over it, furiously pumped like a bush-fire out of control… He played his baritone as hard and as emphatic as his mainstay, the alto. I’m told a new addition to the group, he sounded as if he’d been a part of the action for a good many years. Certainly essential to the overall vitality of this raw, effusive sound I was copping!
Lee Thomson on brass was rather reminiscent of the great Miles, in terms of tone and the technique he employed, clear to me that through all this he was charting his own map, his own voice through these now familiar techniques. Entirely individual none-the-less. Certainly far more engaging than one or two of the brass players that marched in and out of Sydney’s Freeboppers in the mid-1980’s.
Shane Cooper, the double-bass player, who incidentally wrote much of this evening’s tunes, and despite the dread-locks that tended to dominate rather than his playing at first, displayed an outstanding range of skills, temperament and taste for such a young player. His playing was invigorating… he would walk you through a garden of the most astonishing display of colour and texture and then race you dizzy through the crazed streets of Dhaka – from tulips to rickshaw! And was that a drum-stick he was using as a kind of bow or mallet?
The pianist, Jason Reolon, considered one of the best of a new crop of musicians in the country, his voice snaked upward and through me shimmering in the last three pieces; Eclipse (a piece by the drummer, Kesivan Naidoo, and somewhat reminiscent of Night in Tunisia), Prodigal Son and the final piece performed for the encore. In the latter I found myself literally swimming in his rich and complex melodies and syncopated chord shifts… they were indeed gorgeous moments.
Finally, but not least, the amazing and much respected Kesivan Naidoo. Despite the expertise displayed by everyone else on stage, it was Naidoo who held the entire performance together by providing with that extra power that comes from someone who just drives you to perform and outperform to your extreme best. He just made everyone far more powerful!
His enthusiasm for each piece and every player was evident in his consistent drive, the tension that would give way to every accent, constantly building each piece with endless reserves of energy and ideas that had him at one stage standing he was so excited, whacking his kit with precision and enthusiasm, rolling over his toms with guts and fury… cymbals like a sand storm against glass… he was just incredible, his head moving from left to right over a body that seemed too close to his kit. Whether big or small, from where I sat, he dominated his drums, calling his tribe to furious restlessness.
Not since some of the last live gigs I’d seen of the Freeboppers had I experienced anything of equal intensity as I had with the Restless Natives. With a recording session and album to follow, I hope they don’t lose the energy they consume live in the studio as did the Freeboppers when they released their disappointing double-album. But by that stage they’d lost their drummer, Greg Sheehan, who like Naidoo, was integral to groups’ dynamism and overall brain-mash potential. Still, as someone once said, studio recording or not, “Mark [Simmonds] tears the arse out of the saxophone”.
As I’m writing the first Secession Records update for 2008, Secession’s 10th year, I’m listening to the festive sounds of Kaapse Klopse, a kind of music indigenous to Cape Town, and generally performed during what is locally known as the Coon Carnival. Rolling drums include a snare, bass and toms. Trombones and other horns play the melodies.
The band is playing on one of the two piers on Kalk Bay and the few swimmers on the nearby beach are dancing and yelping from the shallow water. Seals twist and turn up near the fishing boats which seem entirely remarkable to be floating at all!
I’ve been in Cape Town for just on two weeks with at least another one to go. I’ve had the good fortune to see the Restless Natives play at one of the more famed of venues, The Armchair Theatre, and meet one of the founding members of the infamous local bands, Bengula. Our first podcast for 2008 features an interview with Alex Bozas and this should be released soon after I return to Australia.
For all your Secession goodness, go to Secession Update / 26 Feb 2008, now archived on the brand new Secession wiki! Just when I thought I would be spending less time online I have two wikis and about five blogs to write for. This doesn’t include MySpace, Flickr and Last.FM, the only social networking sites I’ve got any time for these days.
It was the watermelon and fresh lime juice that first attracted me to Lino, a small cafe situated on a veranda down a side street off the main road of Kalk Bay, Cape Town. It didn’t profess to have the “best coffee” in the Bay, but it did list a “long black” on their chalk board at a time when I was tired of explaining what one was.
Lino is run by James Hope who not only reminded me of Simon Lamont from Annandale’s mid-80s permaculture cafe, Lurlene’s, he was the only second person I’ve met in the world who knows where Mongarlowe is and has been there!
In a tribute to Lino and the lovely, generous, talented and wayward people I’ve met there, I’d penned this piece starting off with a tone poem in the style of Kurt Schwitters.
Lino, lie low, linoneum…
Lino, leano, linguistic…
Li… No!
Li… Lee… arnardo… Lino!
Leno, lipo, lineage…
Li Li Li Li … No… Lino…
LiLiLiLiLiLiLiLiLi … Yes? No?
Yeh… LINO!
Lino is an idea.
More than an idea, it is an engine of difference…
the making of different things
that which supports diversity of trade, of opinion, of needs
and in doing so offers visitors a safe place in which to absorb change,
in comfort, with style,
with little more than coffee and delicate cakes baked at 250 degrees max!
Lino is a hub, a rolling salon or soirée,
never quite fixed,
never quite complete…
it’s not a work, but lives in progress…
Not just anyone can create, sustain and deploy a Lino…
The Linoist is at the edge of anything
and has been everything…
The Linoist has put their life on hold for the people they have cherished,
and you have shaped your life as a schnitter would wood…
The Linoist would have dreamt of sea beams in alpha centori
and sea planes landing in Kalk Bay…
The Linoist was born in the 20th Century too late
and lives through the 21st Century too early
You are, the Linoist, in fact, in your time,
the right time, Lino Time…
For fear of sounding cliché dear friend,
it is now or never…
You are your name-sake…
A line of hope… Lino!
Andrew Garton (21 – 22 Feb 2008, Kalk Bay, Cape Town)
Visited Robben Island a couple of days after returning from the APC meetings in Ithala.
You rise from the sea
suspended between it and the sky
above and below where poets have trawled…
You have held the mighty and the fallen,
the fighters, the lepers
and held fast the moist air…
The moist air falls leaden onto the silent walls, gates, wire, lime mines…
a pall of velvet air heavy on the voices buried in concrete and toil,
in the rocks and sand,
eroded but not forgotten…
Dry and gnarled the sparse trees,
their weathered limbs ache for sun high to the sky,
beyond the perimeter walls where every Mandella stood their incarcerated ground…
You held the banished there,
fed, if but sparsely, the brave and exiled there,
knowing nothing of their misery and pain,
for were they to have wings they would have come and gone as frequently as the tide.
Home for some,
prison island we will remember you by,
bye bye Robben Island.
And on this day that I came to you,
when he was freed,
hope for the many that would follow,
you invite now the curious, the wanderers, the followers who would,
if only briefly, scuttle upon your broken top-soil,
through the freshly painted prison museum,
resonant still with the potency of isolation and inhumanity there…
Dignity does not become you with ease,
your cartography, the points at which we know how to find you your only crime,
for we have sullied your beaches and desecrated your wind borne land
where hope burnt eternal in spite of the oppressors of men,
them too men who saw you as their place of thankless duty,
to demean others of their species divided,
and further still, much further still, from you,
left behind, bye bye Robben Island.
Andrew Garton
11 February, 2008
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