Cape Town music picks: October 22 2010

Cape Town celebrates home-grown rap and jazz this weekend.

• ‘We call it ‘Spaza’. We rap in Xhosa, it’s straight from the townships! I don’t rap fiction. I’m for real. I talk about things that I know; things I’ve seen; things that happened in my life,” declares Rattex. The pioneering vernacular rapper is explaining his 100% kasi content, which documents the highs and lows of township life on a dizzying array of topics ranging from partying, poverty and crime to H.I.V., xenophobia and more. Having just returned from an extensive European Festival tour that saw him tear up stages at festivals in Switzerland and Germany, the Khayelitsha-based rapper launches his brand new EP, Streets, Raps & Us this weekend. Rattex’s first release since his debut solo album, Bread and Butter, the EP boasts a Molotov cocktail of boom bap beats and grime-y digitalia of producers Hipe and Dplanet, DJ Raiko on cuts and a special remix by Swiss electro-dub band Filewile. Alongside Rattex’s kasi fire, hip-hop heads can also expect a classic boom bap-jazzy beat cocktail courtesy of Writers Block front man, Mingus aka X the 24th Letter, who recently released his 2nd solo project, Beneath The Underdog. Core Wreckah warms up the floor, with post-party platters courtesy of DJ Raiko.
  Zula Sound Bar, Long Street, October 22. Entrance is R30.
  

• ‘Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your widsom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But man, there’s no boundary line to art” chirped Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker famously. Rus Nerwich has clearly been listening. Over the past decade the Mother City saxophonist has proved to be one of South Africa’s most idiosyncratic jazz stylists. On his critically-acclaimed album Beyond the Walls he explored a reverential roots jazz fusion of Eastern European gypsy jazz and Yiddish folk song. His spiritually swinging combos Mantras for Modern Man and Tones of Note also wowed serious jazz heads with their original repertoire of soul searching improvisations and world music grooves. More recently he took mainstream audiences of a frenetically funky nu-soul jazz rapped rollercoaster with his Collective Imagination big band and their Sama-nominated ‘urban pop’ album Under the Poetree. Now, after a short creative hiatus Nerwich swings back into action, performing a rare ‘supper club’ jazz repertoire with his Quartet featuring bassist Lukas Kytnar.
  The Green Dolphin, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, October 22 and 23, 8.15pm, 9.30pm and 11pm. Admission is R35 (sighted table), R30 (unsighted). Lounge is first come, first seated.