A glance at the contemporary media landscape in South Africa conjures up images of newsstands littered with political scandal, criminally bad tabloid journalism and bland design after bland design. It’s no wonder that mainstream media can often leave a sour taste in consumers’ mouths as it’s all too apparent that these publications, both online and…
While Condry Ziqubu’s rise as a star of South Africa’s ‘bubblegum’ disco era may have appeared rapid, before his big break as a solo artist in 1983, Ziqubu had already been working professionally in the music industry for 15 years. A regular on the local soul scene since the late 1960s in groups such as…
The text that is to follow is an exercise of sorts between writer Kneo Mokgopa and myself. An attempt at writing together from afar and from places of familiar difference, of Vinolia Mashego, who was affectionally known as V Mash to us and the rest of the nation. To write of her in remembrance and…
Which stories would I highlight – the underground anecdotes and thrillers; the days and nights of love and war; the weapons I carried (a Makarov in my shoulder bag in Gaborone, the AK next to my bed in Lusaka) – “a gun in trained hands is knowledge, its hinges and oily places as intimate as a…
Kewpie was a hairdresser and celebrated queer figure from District Six. She was born in 1941 and identified as gender fluid according to available knowledge. She preferred the use of feminine pronouns as did her friends, though she did not strictly regard herself as either male or female. After her dreams of becoming a dancer…
You never know where the decisions you make will take you. Back in 2011, I got a few friends together to start a blog that would focus on the Durban music and art scene that we thought wasn’t getting the love it deserved. That, and try way too hard to be Vice. Forgive us, we…
As your body descends into the underground the darkness slowly caresses your cheek. You are met by a crude yet unflinching interior as you try and find a seat to call yours for the night. A safe space, a ‘third space’, this is Cape Town underground. Loud, dark, dingy. A live jazz band competes with…
One of my favorite hidden gems in Joburg just so happens to also be a “tribute to South Africa’s punk and alternative scene” past! On Jan smuts, opposite the Goodman gallery lies an entrance surrounded by a leather garments display, and if you’re lucky you will see a black and chrome bike with dangling tassels…
“There are venues and there are institutions”, I was once told: a friend attempting to draw categories in Johannesburg’s night-time cartography. Undoubtedly, Kitchener’s (or KCB) falls into the latter group. It’s the ‘go-to’ club when you have no prior plans. It’s the comfort of knowing the sound and crowd to expect when you arrive. It’s…
Run your finger through the history of techno and you will eventually come to the source: Belleville, Detroit in the mid-1980s. It was here where the Belleville Three — Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins and Derrick May — first melded Chicago House, Funk, Electro and Electric Jazz to create the blueprint for what we now know as techno…
‘In two more years, my sweetheart, we will see another view’. Bloc Party lyrics that once punctuated the playlist of a monthly Newtown party called Cellardoor. The Cellardoor parties ran from 2005 to 2007: a two-year slice in the history of Johannesburg’s nocturnal life. Co-founder, Marc Latilla, holds a catalogue of flyers and photographs from…
Durban is a city that is constantly evacuated, reconstituted, and returned to; kids throw their lives into bags and haul pieces of themselves back-and-forth while trying to find their bigger-picture footing. Despite is sleepy façade, things aren’t anchored in the same ways as other cityscapes; there’s an ephemeral and meteoric quality to the things that…
