Maybe that should be 46 days. Or 48. Or one. Ask a dozen people when the Cape Town New Year's Carnival begins, and you'll probably get a dozen different answers.
Ahmed Ismail leads the Pennsylvanian Crooning Minstrels choir in rehearsal, in the troupe's Hanover Park klopskamer, 2008.
The guide books will tell you that Carnival begins on January 2nd, the Tweede Nuwe Jaar [Second New Year], when scores of minstrel troupes and tens of thousands of minstrels parade through the streets of central Cape Town. Or maybe it's January 1st, when those same troupes compete against each other in football (soccer) stadiums scattered across the suburbs of the Cape Flats. You could make an argument for New Year's Eve, when the nag troepe [Malay Choirs] stage their own march through the city. And then there's the mid-December parade of the Christmas Bands. Lots of choices.
If you ask me, I'll tell you that Carnival has already begun.
The Pennsylvanian's choir in rehearsal, 2008.
The Cape Town New Year's Carnival is a series of events, no doubt about it. The big parade on the Tweede Nuwe Jaar, the competitions, the streets marches through the working-class neighborhoods of the Cape Flats--these are all hugely important.
But Carnival is also a feeling of joy and excitement that begins sometime in October or November, when the band and choir rehearsals pick up in frequency and intensity, when more and more troupe members start hanging out in the klopskamers [clubhouses], when the tailors who make the uniforms and craftsmen who make the drums and tambourines find themselves working almost non-stop. It's a lot of hard work. But it's also a lot of fun.
A rehearsal of the Pennsylvanian's choir, 2006.
I've dipped into my archives for some photos which show the sort of activity that's going on all over the Cape Flats right about now. These are out-takes. I like them, but they won't appear in my book on Carnival, One Love, Ghoema Beat, that will be published in May 2010 by Random House Struik, in South African, and the University of Virginia Press, in the United States.
Anwar Gambino leads a rehearsal of the Nokia All Stars choir, in the klopskamer in Mitchell's Plain, 2008.
A photo that I made, during a band rehearsal, the very first time I visited the Pennsylvanian's klopskamer, in 2006.
The Pennsylvanian Crooning Minstrels is one of many troupes that encourages children to join the band, offering them free instruments and instruction. It's a way of keeping Carnival traditions alive, while giving young people an alternative to the streets. Rehearsal, 2008.
"Boeta" Achmat Sabera is Cape Town's finest drum maker. Virtually every minstrel troupe and Malay choir uses his ghoema drums and tambourines. (The drums that he's working on here are for a religious ceremony, not for Carnival.) Boeta Achmat in his workshop, 2007.
Moegammad "Monte" Cassiem is one of a about a dozen tailors who makes uniforms for the Carnival troupes. During the busiest period, he'll employ seven or eight people. Monte and a seamstress in his workshop, 2007.
Seamstresses in Monte's workshop, 2007.
You can see more of my Carnival photos, here, and learn more about Carnival, here.
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