Friday
night
Bongani Madondo
Feeling kinda bluesy as I scribble this piece. As one African slave-descended poet, Langston Hughes, once inked, “Feeling bluesy should not be confused with feeling down”. Feeling bluesy is feeling emotionally enchanted in that you’re closer to your ancestors than anyone around you.
And that is how I am feeling today. And it’s not because it’s Friday. Being a boring to nerdish young oke with a weird sense of fun, I am holed up in my shack – these upper-crust shacks piled on top of one another by architects that you snobby sorts refer to as “apartments”.
No, my bluesiness is not even a result of the music I am listening to right now: a mix of Senegalese blues masters Orchestra Baobab, Keb Mo, Buddy Guy and hip-hop jazz has-beens Digable Planets along with Sibongile Khumalo’s Tsakwe Royal Blue. Rather my state of emotions comes from my longing for next Monday to dawn – right now!
See, Mondays have this arresting effect on my poor soul. It’s the only day that I get to tow my other half – that dimpled killer beauty with mood swings like John Coltrane’s Love Supreme – to invade the Monday Blues session at Kippies.
Even as I pen this, I can’t lay down the sense of feeling that this mild mix of pot- inspired poetry, music and skinner inspires in its all-willing patrons.
I swear I am not a regular, but on those rare occasions when I drag my one to wherever that creative prostitute called Monday Blues is – be it Melville or the Market Theatre Precinct – I am bloody disarmed by the atmosphere pumping in there.
Monday Blues is so soul soothing that all new South African tribes bob and weave to scatting lines of poetry, verses from professional poets and chance-takers like yours truly, as well as music from any musicians, signed and unsigned.
It’s all things loose without being sleazy, all things creative without any ego- catwalking by so-called happening artists.
It rightly captures the long-lost tradition whereby granny would assume the role of the family griot, the wise one with all the beautiful narratives, unleashing centuries of wisdom to us dirty little awe-struck kids in the family, on that front stoep called lap in Sotho.
That is the feeling conjured up by Monday Blues. So the main reason you’ll find me home on Friday, is that I am simply saving the best of my energies for Monday. It is then that I can feel bluesy like Gil Scott-Heron, dance to the blues of Sophiatown kugels like Thandi Klassen. Each bluesy Monday topics tend to hip-hop from political backbiting to pseudo-artistic- intellectual chats much-liked by my pen pals, bohemian writers Bafana Khumalo, Thabiso Leshoai and all those creative darkies who lie that “dit sal die dag wees, if you see me working for a white man”.
So there’s the reason why if you want to do that black thing and gatecrash my shack without appointment, as is done ekasie, Fridays are your best bet for finding me at home. Either the calendar designers were damn mad or I am totally kaput upstairs, but I can’t but ask this question: “Why should we all go crazy about Friday, if there is a day called Monday?”
Oh my, Buddy Guy is tearing up Mississippi with his Carlo Santana-ish guitar riffs. Yes, I feel blue!
Bongani Madondo is freelance scribe. Monday Blues is the soulchild of M&G writer Peter Makurube who co-ordinates the weekly gigs at Kippies