Derek Gripper :: ’56 (Ali “Farka” Touré)

Derek Gripper launched the “digital” version of One Night on Earth: Music from the Strings of Mali at the South African Slave Church Museum in May 2012. Playful yet poignant, the album sees the unprecedented arrangement of 21-string West African kora music on six-string classical guitar, exploring the compositions of Mali’s Toumani Diabaté (who performed at the Slave Church in 2009). The album also features Ali “Farka” Touré’s “’56,” which is derived from a Guinean revolutionary song. From Conakry to Timbuktu to Cape Town, “’56” speaks of music’s ability to shrink time and space, uniting three seemingly disconnected African states and, coincidentally, a period of 56 years, into a single performance. Night on Earth is being released on CD this month and is available from New Cape Records on Bandcamp.

Goema Orchestra :: Agent of Connectivity

For this month’s pair of Cape Town Goema Orchestra performances, I presented an update on Mama Goema and drew attention to the broader activities of the goema "movement.” I touched on the theme of connectivity and the idea of forging an global sound for the 21st century. We acknowledged special guests Bongiwe Lusizi of Mthwakazi, who saw the show on 8 September, as well as jazz-giant Sathima Benjamin, who attended the 15 September performance. This is how it went:

My involvement with the Cape Town Goema Orchestra began in 2010 with Goema Symphony No. 1, the “happening” that features in the film Mama Goema, which premiered in Cape Town last year. I’m pleased to report that the film was voted best documentary feature at the Tri Continental Film Festival in 2011 and has, to the merit of those in and behind the scenes, reached audiences in Portugal, Colombia, Canada, Switzerland and Scotland.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been asked countless times what the film is about. I used to brush these enquiries off by saying that it’s about Cape Town music. If I’m feeling mischievous, I might say it’s about a shape-shifter from Pleiades who comes to Earth as a punk rocker, reinvents himself as a jazz cat and then decides to be a composer of symphonies. If I have time, I say it about goema and spend the next three hours unravelling what the film does more efficiently in 55 minutes.

Nowadays, I'd propose that the film about connectivity and that goema is what connectivity sounds like. We used up all the “ubuntu” during the Madiba Years and we had a good time but now we’re into this stuff that grows in Cape Town. And it’s addictive. But it’s good for you. And what is Cape Town if not an agent of connectivity on the planet. It’s no coincidence that East meets West in Africa in Cape Town. And no coincidence that what started as Goema Symphony No. 1 in 2010 became Table Bay Concerto in 2011 in is now adrift with the South Atlantic Suite on route to Mali, Serbia and the Eastern Cape tonight, consciously evoking a goema of the 21st century. You can always detect that familiar homecoming sound but tonight’s programme marks goema’s most challenging, expansive and inclusive move ever.

And so, as we look at where we are now, we see Kyle Shepherd connecting with Japan, Ernestine Deane connecting with Germany, Hilton Schilder re-connecting our youth with the music of the bow. We see Achmat Sabera on a South African postage stamp and a Sabera “gummy” on every single continent on the planet. A Goema Roadshow, featuring Hilton Schilder and Achmat Sabera, visited 10 schools from Newlands to Mitchell’s Plain over the last three weeks reminding over 600 learners what Cape Town connectivity sounds like. We also celebrate the third season of the Goema Orchestra with an EP dropped into cyberspace in the hopes that it will reach the hearts via the ears of listeners around the planet.

Photo © Steve Gordon