John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

Funky Friday with Mac McKenzie and the Cape Town Goema Orchestra

[If you're here for the music, scroll down to the bottom of the page, then come back and read about Mac.]

What to do in Cape Town on the next two Saturday nights?  Take yourself over to the SABC Auditorium, in Sea Point, of course.  That's where Mac McKenzie -- always one of most exciting and unpredictable figures on Cape Town's music scene -- will lead the Goema Orchestra in the world premiere of his Table Bay Concerto in G.

For years, Mac has been creating brilliant mashups that mix goema -- the musical soul of the Cape Town Carnival -- with various other types of music, especially jazz and rock.  Lately, he's been blending it with classical music, with amazing results.  I was lucky enough to be in the audience for his last series of concerts with the orchestra (they coincided with the Cape Town International Jazz Festival), and I was blown away.  If you care at all about new music, you'll want to be there.

 

[Click on the image to see a larger version.]

Here's what Mac himself has to say about the Concerto:  It's “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 time of colonialism, up to the present. I’ve borrowed from various forms such as European hymnody, classical forms and street music -– what I sometimes call tsotsi music -– and assimilated them into goema.  The goema is the heartbeat of the minstrel carnival.”

Mac's music is attracting international attention.  In July, he performed in Switzerland with members of the Casal Quartet and other South African musicians, including Paul Hanmer and Feya Faku.  The performances were so well received that the Swiss organisers have commissioned a new work for a 25-piece orchestra, which he'll direct, in 2012, at festivals across Switzerland.

The debuts of works by guest composers Chantal Willie, Derek Gripper, Mandla Mlangeni, and Aykes Swartz are also on the program.

For more information, call (072) 500 2204 (in South Africa).

* * *

I mentioned that Mac has been concocting mixtures of goema and other music for a long time. Besides the Goema Orchesta, my favorites are the recordings he made with Mr. Mac and the Genuines.  (Mr. Mac was Mac's father and a well known Cape Town musician.)  It's one part rock, one part jazz, and all parts goema. There's never been anything like it, before or since.  Which is a shame, because it's killer music.

   

Released 02 February 1987.

Samuel "Mr Mac" McKenzie, banjo;  Mac McKenzie, bass and vocals; Hilton Schilder, keyboards, percussion, and vocals; Gerard O'Brien, guitar; Ian Herman, drums.

Mac McKenzie & the Cape Town Goema Orchestra, Saturday, 28 August 2010

I just got off the phone with my friend Mac McKenzie, one of the most creative, original, and brilliantly off-center musicians ever to walk the streets of Cape Town (as anyone in the know will tell you).  We were talking, among other things, about the upcoming premiere of his Goema Symphony No. 1.

A lot of people are going to find the idea of Mac writing a symphony surprising, to say the least.  After all, he's best known as one of the mad geniuses (the other was Hilton Schilder) behind the Genuines, one of the few rock bands that can honestly be called revolutionary.  In fact, the symphony is another moment in Mac's life-long exploration of goema, the traditional music of Cape Town.

Mac McKenzie.  (Photo copyright John Edwin Mason, 2010.)

Both the Genuines and a later band, the Goema Captains of Cape Town, played goema rock, goema jazz, goema pop, and goema just-about-everything-else-under-the-sun.  What's important isn't simply that they did it; what's important is that they did it and made it all sound good.  This wasn't a haphazard mish-mash of musical styles.  It was a carefully prepared, masterfully seasoned musical gumbo.

 

(Click directly on the poster to see a larger version.)

Over the last couple of years, I've heard bits and pieces of the symphony, in rehearsal and in concert.  I've liked where it's going, and it breaks me heart that I won't be in Cape Town to hear the premiere.

I can guarantee this:  You will never have heard anything quite like it, and you'll want to hear more.  This will be one very tasty Cape Town gumbo, or, more properly, Cape Town bredie.

Here's a nice video of Mac talking about it all.

   The event takes place on Saturday, the 28th, at the SABC Studios Auditorium, on Beach Road, in Sea Point, Cape Town, at 8:00 pm.  (There's always plenty of free on-street parking nearby.)

You can find more information about the concert, here , or by calling (079) 726 3582.

* * *

Paul Sedres recently added these comments.  They deserve a place in the body of this post:

Mac McKenzie occupies a seat in the front row of groundbreakers & precious musical thinkers in Cape Town & South Africa. His new work Goema Symphony No.1 is another significant step he is taking in enriching the language of an epoch of music from the port city of Cape Town. He is one of the great guardians and visionaries of the goema style, which emerged from a joyous mixed masala of sounds with its roots in Carnival music that goes back well over a century. The scope of this work may yet make it a revolutionary chapter in the evolution of the form.

With his musical vision and creativity McKenzie is inventing the future of folk music from the Cape. Much of this has evolved for the last few years out of Mac's modest, yet AMAZING Composers' Workshop in the backyard of his Cape Flats home. His eyes see beyond the horizon and he is worthy of great respect.

Is ja!

Paul Sedres
Paris,
France

* * *

Goema is also spelled ghoema.  It's pronounced goo-muh.

"One Love, Ghoema Beat: Inside the Cape Town Carnival"

I've created a website for my book, One Love, Ghoema Beat:  Inside the Cape Town Carnival.  It's published, in South Africa, by Random House Struik and, elsewhere, by the University of Virginia Press.  An audio/video preview of the book is the star attraction on the site.

Duckrabbit Likes Ghoema!

Well, I've finally arrived.  From now on, it's the big time for me.  The esteemed, venerable, and beloved (and, occasionally, noticed, read, and paid attention to) duckrabbit blog likes my new book, One Love, Ghoema Beat:  Inside the Cape Town Carnival.

You can click directly on the image to see a larger version of this screen shot.  Better yet, click here and go directly to ducky's blog to see what he has to say.

Update, 12 May 2010:  "One Love, Ghoema Beat:  Inside the Cape Town Carnival"is now available from Random House Struik, at any South African bookstore.  The North American edition, published by the University of Virginia Press, is on its way.

Preview: "One Love, Ghoema Beat: Inside the Cape Town Carnival"

Update, 12 May 2010:  "One Love, Ghoema Beat:  Inside the Cape Town Carnival" is now available from any South African bookstore.  The North American edition is on its way.

My new book, One Love, Ghoema Beat:  Inside the Cape Town Carnival, will be in bookstores in South Africa and the United States within just a few days.  It's published, in South Africa, by Random House Struik and, in the US, by the University of Virginia Press.

Here's a preview -- the sights and sounds of the Carnival.  The photos are mine; the music is provided by the band of Cape Town's Pennsylvanians Crooning Minstrels, the Carnival troupe with which I spent the most time.  Under the leadership of Richard Stemmet, the Pennsylvanians have won championship after championship for well over a decade.
 

To see a larger version of this audio slideshow, click on this link -- One Love, Ghoema Beat: Inside the Cape Town Carnival -- or on the Vimeo logo above.  Make sure that you have your speakers turned up to 11!

The slideshow is divided into three parts.  It opens with the Carnival troupes' massive parade through central Cape Town, an event that happens every January 2nd and which marks the official beginning of Carnival.  Over 60 troupes, with roughly 30,000 members over all, take part.  Tens of thousands of spectators line the streets.  I then take you backstage to choir and band rehearsals, tailors' shops, and drum makers' workshops -- rarely seen aspects of Carnival.  The slideshow ends with the fierce inter-troupe competitions that extend into February.  I made the photos -- many more are in the book -- during the four years that I marched with the troupes.

You may be wondering about the word ghoema that appears in the book's title.  It's a drum (you'll see it in the slideshow); it's a rhythm (you'll hear it in the slideshow); and it's a sensibility -- the spirit of Carnival in Cape Town.

* * *

I'll close with a couple of early comments about One Love, Ghoema Beat.  After having worked so hard on this project, they were gratifying to read:

"The photographs are stunning. The prose is lean and suggestive, almost conversational, its economy wonderfully contrasts with the sumptuousness of photographs flooded with flamingo pink, shimmering satin, rainbow-hued glitter, and spangles." 

--Diana Wylie, Boston University, author of Art and Revolution: The Life and Death of Thami Mnyele, South African Artist

"John Edwin Mason treats the work and play of Cape Town's carnival as a prism into the everyday struggles that are the legacy of apartheid.  He was touched by the people he came to know, intrigued by the history of their carnival, surprised by the deep commitments he encountered, and thrilled by ghoema aesthetics. These qualities animate the work.  One Love, Ghoema Beat presents sound history and stimulating explanation with an eye for a very good party.  It is a pleasure to read and view."

--Louise Meintjes, Duke University, author of Sound of Africa:  Making Music Zulu in a South African Studio