Monday Blues - 7th May 2012

Catch these brilliant acts at Monday Blues on the 7th May . . . Bongeziwe Mabandla, The Soil, n many more!!! Venue: Pata Pata Address: Main Street Life, Fox Street, Johannesburg) Time: 19h00 R30 gets you in!

Monday Blues @ Cofi

Monday Blues sessions have moved to the elegant venue Cofi in Rosebank. This venue is situated in the Zone. We've had two session there so far and everything is picking up well. In just these past two weeks we've seen brilliant acts to name a few, Ntsiki Mazwai's, Sliq Angel, Johnny Craddle, Skabangas and so many others.

Do join us at Cofi every Monday over the next couple of months, bring an instrument, a poem, song, dance and remember to tell a friend!!

See you on Monday!

For more info, please contact Siya on 076 249 4167 or e-mail: mondayblues91@gmail.com

Still your AFRICAN EXPERIENCE

Monday Blues now @ Ko'spotong Newtown

We'll Monday Blues turned 19 this month, we celebrated this legendary stage the whole month with brilliant performances. Monday Blues has now moved from Melville to Ko'spotong Newtown, lets get together this Monday 01 November and do what we do best..,poetry, jam sessions, live performances, comedy and more. See you there!!

Ntsiki Mazwai on the Monday Blues Stage

Ntsiki Mazwai's performing a one man theatre show from collective poems on the Monday Blues stage... then we have the usual, live performances, comedy, poetry, jam sessions, good music... this is the type of session you can't afford to miss. See you Monday at Belvista, Troyville @ 19h00.

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Ntsiki Mazwai- biog

This is no languid butterfly, drifting aimlessly among forced, insipid blooms in an artificial hothouse. Ntsiki Mazwai is a hummingbird. Multi-hued. Bursting with the delight of life. Radiating energy as she drinks deeply of the rich blossoms that sprout wherever they find root, she pours these experiences out in a brilliantly coloured tapestry of poetry, dance and song.

Don't think her exuberance is a sign of superficial infatuation with "art" and "life". Young as she is, Ntsiki is no stranger to deep hurts, confusion, rejection and the cruelty of selfish relationships. The conflict of a culture in evolution, swinging from hip black street rap to western cannons of art and literature is reflected in her poems. This is not a woman who skates on the surface of emotion, but a sensitive being who feels the beauty and power of her art strongly.

Ntsiki is clearly conducting a love affair with words: words as poems, words as song, words as dance and wild combinations of all three. Her first foray into the excitement of her creativity was poetry. Then she realised that she could share those words and thoughts on stage and exposed an electrifying dimension of performance which she took to enthusiastically, finding another aspect of her personality and talents previously unknown. She embodies the issue of identity facing so many South Africans, shifting into "situational identities" rather than stabilising on a fixed, unalterable core identity as we strive to find a suitable merging of sometimes contrasting indigenous and western cultures, values and ideas.

From hugely successful beadwork to written poetry, from poems performed and danced to theatre and music, the constant underlying theme of Ntsiki's work is courage - courage to speak on painful or controversial issues with almost brutal honesty. "The book relates my journeys in a very personal way," she explains. "I want the work to help heal people so that they can tell their stories and then be brave to find their own voice and operate as full human beings, and not as the wounded spirits that fill our world."

MONDAY BLUES: TRIBUTE TO DINKIES SITHOLE (08 March)

Monday Blues pays tribute to another great artist this week, Dinkies Sithole. There will be some of his work on display, friends, fans and collegues to honor his memory through various artistic expressions.

Dinkies Sithole




( 28.05.1970 - 20.12.2009 )

Born in Soweto, Dinkies Sithole is a painter, sculptor and acclaimed tap-dancer. He studied at the Pelmama Art Centre in Soweto and learned his dance techniques as a member of the Whizzkid Dance Group in Soweto in the late 1980s. He has practiced ballet, break-dancing and tap-dancing. As dancer and choreographer he has been involved in Arts Alive and the Grahamstown Arts Festival.

Sithole is much inspired by ritualistic and spiritual journeys, with his work (painting, sculpture and dance), way of life and love of nature being inextricably linked. Since childhood he has been fascinated by the philosophy and painting techniques ¬ using natural pigments on the raw rock face - of the San people. Following an exchange of ideas with Asian students during his exhibitions in New York and Vermont, Sithole has been influenced also by Sharman and Buddist philosophies. The work on show reflects a certain calligraphic quality, using oriental inks and collage techniques on textured rice papers. Sithole explores the relationship between the elements ¬ earth, wind, water and fire ¬ and his paintings speak of human spiritual experience in uncovering our hidden sentiments as we confront our reality in relation to time and space.

Selected solo exhibitions: Meditating with the Sharmans, Franchise Gallery, Johannesburg (2005); Dinkies Sithole, Hanover Street Gallery, Liverpool (2001); Leaving Room for the Eye to Discover II, Johannesburg Art Foundation (2000); Leaving Room for the Eye to Discover I, Johannesburg Art Foundation (1998); Imidlalo, Rembrandt van Rijn Gallery, Newtown, Johannesburg (1997). Selected group exhibitions: New Paintings, Durban Art Gallery, Unisa, Johannesburg Art Gallery (2005 ¬ 2006); Vermont Studio Art Centre Gallery, Johnson, USA (2002); Identities: CrossPath Culture, New York, USA (2001), Cross Overs, CrossPath Culture Studios, Johannesburg (2001); Black Visions, Mofolo Art Centre, Soweto (1995); Primitive Sculpture Exhibition, Newtown Galleries, Johannesburg (1992).



VENUE: BELAVISTA LOUNGE,
CNR BERTRAMS & CARNARVAR,
TROYVILLE

TIME: 20H00

CONTACT E-MAIL: t.ntliziyo@gmail.com

MONDAY BLUES - TRIBUTE TO MIRIAM MAKEBA

Monday Blues is bring you another wonderful show this coming Monday. Throughout the month of March we will pay tribute to great South African artists and celebrate them the best way we know how. This Monday we celebrate Mama Africa, Mama Mirriam Makeba through music, poetry, comedy, jam sessions and more. Do join us and be part of this AFRICAN EXPERIENCE.


Zenzile Miriam Makeba was born in Johannesburg in 1932. Her mother was a Swazi sangoma and her father, who died when she was six, was a Xhosa. As a child, she sang at the Kilmerton Training Institute in Pretoria, which she attended for eight years.

Makeba first toured with an amateur group. Her professional career began in the 1950s with the Manhattan Brothers, before she formed her own group, The Skylarks, singing a blend of jazz and traditional melodies of South Africa.


Mirriam Makeba

Early Years:

In 1959, she performed in the musical King Kong alongside Hugh Masekela, her future husband. Though she was a successful recording artist, she was only receiving a few dollars for each recording session and no provisional royalties, and was keen to go to the United States. Her break came when she had a short guest appearance in the anti-apartheid documentary Come Back, Africa in 1959 by independent filmmaker Lionel Rogosin. The short cameo made an enormous impression on the viewers and Lionel Rogosin managed to organise a visa for her to leave South Africa and to attend the premiere of the film at the Venice Film Festival.


Exile:

Makeba then travelled to London where she met Harry Belafonte, who assisted her in gaining entry to and fame in the United States. She released many of her most famous hits there including "Pata Pata", "The Click Song" ("Qongqothwane" in Xhosa), and "Malaika". In 1966, Makeba received the Grammy Award for Best Folk Recording together with Harry Belafonte for An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba. The album dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under apartheid.

She discovered that her South African passport was revoked when she tried to return there in 1960 for her mother's funeral. In 1963, after testifying against apartheid before the United Nations, her South African citizenship and her right to return to the country were revoked.She has had nine passports, and was granted honorary citizenship of ten countries.

Her marriage to Trinidadian civil rights activist and Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee leader Stokely Carmichael in 1968 caused controversy in the United States, and her record deals and tours were cancelled. As a result of this, the couple moved to Guinea, where they became close with President Ahmed Sékou Touré and his wife. Makeba separated from Carmichael in 1973, and continued to perform primarily in Africa, South America and Europe. She was one of the African and Afro-American entertainers at the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman held in Zaïre. Makeba also served as a Guinean delegate to the United Nations, for which she won the Dag Hammarskjöld Peace Prize in 1986. After the death of her only daughter Bongi Makeba in 1985, she moved to Brussels. In 1987, she appeared in Paul Simon's Graceland tour. Shortly thereafter she published her autobiography Makeba: My Story.


Return to SA:

Nelson Mandela persuaded her to return to South Africa in 1990. In November 1991, she made a guest appearance in an episode of The Cosby Show, in the episode "Olivia Comes Out Of The Closet". In 1992 she starred in the film Sarafina!, about the 1976 Soweto youth uprisings, as the title character's mother, "Angelina." She also took part in the 2002 documentary Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony where she and others recalled the days of apartheid.

On 16 October 1999, Miriam Makeba was nominated Goodwill Ambassador of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). In January 2000, her album, Homeland, produced by Cedric Samson and Michael Levinsohn was nominated for a Grammy Award in the "Best World Music" category. In 2001 she was awarded the Gold Otto Hahn Peace Medal by the United Nations Association of Germany (DGVN) in Berlin, "for outstanding services to peace and international understanding". In 2002, she shared the Polar Music Prize with Sofia Gubaidulina. In 2004, Makeba was voted 38th in the Top 100 Great South Africans. Makeba started a worldwide farewell tour in 2005, holding concerts in all of those countries that she had visited during her working life. Her publicist notes that Makeba had suffered "severe arthritis" for some time

Her Passing On:

On 9 November 2008, she became ill while taking part in a concert organized to support writer Roberto Saviano in his stand against the Camorra, a mafia-like organisation local to the Region of Campania. The concert was being held in Castel Volturno, near Caserta, Italy. Makeba suffered a heart attack after singing her hit song "Pata Pata", and was taken to the "Pineta Grande" clinic where doctors were unable to revive her.

May sounds of her beautiful voice never stop playing in our hearts and minds.

Belavista Lounge
Cnr Bertrams and Carnarvar
Troyville
01 March 2010
21h00
R30
E-mail: t.ntliziyo@gmail.com