Showing posts with label derek gripper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label derek gripper. Show all posts

Friday 18 January 2013

Derek Gripper :: Jarabi (Toumani Diabaté)


Derek Gripper’s arrangement of Toumani Diabaté’s “Jarabi” at the Long Street Slave Church in Cape Town (May 2012). This performance sees a 21-string kora composition from Mali finding its expression on a six-string classical guitar at the same venue in which Diabaté performed in 2009. Gripper’s work as a “translator” of the West African kora appears on his 2012 album One Night on Earth: Music from the Strings of Mali, which is available from New Cape Records on Bandcamp.


Thursday 27 September 2012

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.

Monday 11 June 2012

Derek Gripper :: One Night on Earth (2012)


In a culture bent on compartmentalising its musicians, guitarist Derek Gripper is a slippery character. Here’s a guy who understands that a pigeonhole is not an enclosure but rather a place that a bird comes back to when it’s not busy flying. And why not come back to it? After all, if you don’t understand how a box works, how can you possibly think outside it? And who said anything about coming back to the same box? And perhaps some strategic wall removals won’t bring the whole structure down. Or will they? I guess these are the risks one has to take to bottle the sound of water or catch fish in a tangled net.

Coming on the heels of 2011’s The Sound of Water, which the guitarist self-effacingly describes as an album “that didn’t win a SAMA award” while neglecting to claim kudos for its nomination, Derek Gripper launched One Night on Earth: Music from the Strings of Mali at the Old Slave Church (Long Street, Cape Town) on Saturday 12 May 2012. Both playful as well as poignant, Night on Earth sees the unprecedented “translation” of West African kora music to solo acoustic guitar and features the compositions of Mali’s legendary Toumani Diabaté, who performed at the same, sublime venue in 2009. The album also features compositions by fellow Malians Ali Farka Touré and Ballaké Sissoko as well as French cellist Vincent Ségal.

Although this thrilling and highly-accessible instrumental outing merits attention, Derek Gripper seems less concerned about courting mainstream criticism than using the democratic tools of new media to build a community around his innovations. Released on his home-spun label New Cape Records, Night on Earth forgoes hard copies in favour of digital distribution on a “name your price” basis. Moreover, downloadable guitar tablature scores are available on Derek Gripper’s personal website, which also provides other useful guitar resources and explains his Montessori-inspired method of guitar training. “The only difference between the music of Bach and the music of Toumani Diabaté,” writes open-source advocate Derek Gripper, “is that Toumani’s music does not exist in the type of score format that allows another musicians to actually play the music themselves.”

Photo (First Edition CD Album Art) © Bernard Descamps

Wednesday 7 December 2011

Cape Town Goema Orchestra :: Table Bay Concerto


“This showcase of Cape music will do Capetonians proud,” says composer Mac McKenzie. “The Table Bay Concerto in G-Major is a chronological account of Table Bay as I imagine it, my impression of its evolution from the time just before the arrival of European settlers through the era of colonialism up to the present. I’ve borrowed from various forms such as European hymnody, classical and street music (which I sometimes call tsotsi music) and assimilated them into goema, the heartbeat of the minstrel carnival.”

“The 20-piece Cape Town Goema Orchestra is a synergy of diverse performers from highly experienced classical, jazz and traditional instrumentalists to young church and street musicians, all connected to the rich culture and soundscape of our city. It’s a truly unifying force in our country that celebrates and takes our music forward with vision and passion.”

A "bootleg" concert video was produced by Profoundly South African for the Cape Town Composers' Workshop archive and documents the world première of the the Table Bay Concerto on 26 November 2011. Also featured here is the work of guest composers Mandla Mlangeni and Derek Gripper. Stream the following playlist above:

1. D-Major Goema (G.S. McKenzie)
2. Inventory (M. Mlangeni)
3. Copenhagen (D. Gripper)
4. The Table Bay Concerto in G-Major (G.S. McKenzie)
5. Healing Destination ft. Kaatjie Davids (G.S. McKenzie)

Wednesday 1 September 2010

Jou Ma Se Goema :: Film Teaser



Cape Town came about as a result of its location and the subsequent historic forces that were visited upon it. What emerged is a city with cultural and linguistic characteristics drawn from the disparate influences of Western Europe, Maritime Southeast Asia and Southern Africa (amongst others).

While Cape Town’s musicians take inspiration from the natural wonders that surround them, they inhabit an African city in the process of negotiating how it projects itself to the rest of the world. A place of musical diversity, modern Cape Town seeks to rise above tolerance to pursue meaningful cultural integration. This challenge is reflected in Cape Town’s oldest manifestation of authentic musical culture, Tweede Nuwe Jaar and the Coon Carnival.

The Carnival’s rhythm, Goema, initially a term describing the drums used in the minstrel parades and subsequently the name of the characteristic Cape beat that emerged from these drums, was adopted as a Cape Jazz idiom in the 20th century and has been interpreted through Rock, Hip-Hop and Electro in recent times. Modern usage of the word reflects a growing re-appraisal of Klopse culture and a new movement that defines Cape Town’s “sound” by the inventive blending of cultural influences.

(This teaser evolved into the documentary Mama Goema)