John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

Cape Town & Goema: The Sound of the City

Cape Town is lucky in all sorts of ways.  (It's also deeply troubled, but that's a topic for another post.)  The city nestles between Table Mountain and the sea in one of the most spectacular natural settings in the world.  The people are wonderful, the food is amazing, and it has its own music -- goema.

I'm going to be talking about goema's history at the annual conference of South African Association for Jazz Education [SAJE] next Tuesday afternoon at the University of Cape Town.  I'll be making the point that goema -- a music that blends influences from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas -- could only have grown in Cape Town's unique soil.  It's rooted in a history of slavery and forced migrations, colonialism, dispossession, struggle, and ultimately freedom.

My friends Paul Sedres and Mac McKenzie will follow me on the program (I promise to be short) and talk about goema's present and future.  Then Mac will play some goema, in all its diversity.  (Mac is the first person that you hear speaking in the trailer for the wonderful documentary "Mama Goema," directly below.)

 

 

"Mama Goema:  The Cape Town Beat in Five Movements."

I don't doubt for a minute that most of the audience will be delighted if there's a lot more playing than talking.  Mac is an underground legend in South African music circles.  He first came to prominence in the '80s, fronting The Genuines, a band that combined rock, jazz, funk, and goema.  Since then he's been involved in a variety of extraordinary projects, including the Cape Town Goema Orchestra.

 

 

"Cutting 'Mama Goema."

By the way, I'm a big fan of "Mama Goema."  The filmmakers -- Ángela Ramirez, Sara Gouveia, and Calum MacNaughton -- get it right and make it fun.  The short documentary (above) about the editing of the film is definitely worth watching.  It's as much about the music and the people who make it as it is about the technical details.

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To find out more about goema, check out my book, One Love, Ghoema Beat:  Inside the Cape Town Carnival.  (Ghoema can be spelled with or without the "h."  I'm an "h" kind of guy.)

Mac will be playing (a lot) and Paul and I will be talking (a little) at 3:45, on Tuesday, March 27th, in Chisholm Recital Hall, at the University of Cape Town's College of Music.

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).

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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.

Wilhelmina "Ma Mac" McKenzie, 1928-2011

Cape Town, South Africa, lost a great soul, today.  Wilhelmina "Ma Mac" McKenzie, wife of the late Samuel "Mr. Mac" McKenzie and mother to Gerald "Mac", Cedric, Consilia, Robert, Sylvia, and Muriel, passed away peacefully, surrounded by her family.

 

Ma Mac, Cape Town, 1 October 2011.  [Click on the photo to see a larger version.]

I was lucky enough to have been a member of a large community of people -- in Cape Town and around the world -- who had come to think of Ma Mac as a second mother.  I've never met anyone more generous with her love, warmth, and unfailing good humor.

When I last saw her -- in the hospice and clearly nearing the end of her days --  her mind and her spirit were as strong as ever.  I've always felt blessed to have known her and to have been able to stay under her roof when I was in Cape Town.  On that particular day, however, the feeling was almost overwhelming.  She gave me so much more than I could ever give in return.  I know that tonight many friends around the world are thinking same thing.

Go well, Ma Mac.  Until we meet again.

Funky Friday with the Goema Captains of Cape Town

A little Funky Friday music from Cape Town, South Africa.  It's Goema Captains playing their version of a song from the Cape Town New Year's Carnival.  This is as local as it gets -- music that's unique to Cape Town -- and it's lekker (which means it's exceedingly good.)

You'll want to dance.  And you should.

 

 

Goema, Goema. (Trad., arranged by Mac McKenzie.)

What you're seeing and you're hearing are two slightly different things.  You're hearing Mac McKenzie, the trickster rabbit of Cape Town music, on guitar, Hilton Schilder and Vincent Kolbe, on piano, Alex van Heerden,, on trumpet, Robbie Jansen, on saxophone, Kurt Diederichs, on drums, and Zolani Mahola, vocals.  Vincent, Alex, and Robbie have all passed away, and they're sorely missed.  Each, in his 
own way, was a musical hero.

The video shows the guys having fun, in and out of the studio.  But you'll also see a little bit of Kaatjie Davids, playing the banjo, and the Continentals, his carnival choir.  You can see more of Kaatjie and the Continentals, here.

If you're going to be in Cape Town, in March, you'll be able to hear a lot more from Mac.

 

 

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

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PS  It was great to see South African president Jacob Zuma acknowledge the importance of the Cape Town Carnival in his State of the Nation address, yesterday:

We also wish to extend a special mention to the popular Cape Minstrels' Carnival, which brightens up this city every year on the 2^nd of January, celebrating the freeing of slaves.

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.

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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

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