Cape music picks: January 28 2011

Thandiswa Mazwai and Robin Auld share the spotlight this week.

• ‘I don’t write the music,” says Thandiswa Mazwai. ‘I receive the music and sing it how it wants to be sung. The music comes from the universe, from that collective consciousness [and] memory, the conversations that we all have with the past, and the future and the present. In my mind those voices speak Xhosa. As an instrument to the music, I have to keep the music’s integrity.” Since going solo, the former Bongo Maffin diva has delved deep into traditional Xhosa melodies and rhythms to map out a fiercely individual path from past to present and future. Her award-winning albums Zabalaza (2005) and Ibokwe (2009) showcase a bewitchingly soulful blend of Afrobeaten folk, jazz, maskandi, reggae, gospel and ghetto funked kwaito-house influences which come together in an invitation for anyone, everyone to listen, laugh, cry and dance along to.
  
  Artscape Theatre, January 29, 9pm. Entrance is R95.
  

• It’s tough sustaining a career as an original singer songwriter in South Africa. Take Robin Auld. Here’s a guy who’s been developing his craft for almost 30 years. Sure he started out as a breezy pop rock balladeer with mid-80s hit singles such as Baby You’ve Been Good to Me and All Of Woman. But over the years he’s become a versatile roots acoustic rock stylist, performing his easygoing cocktail of country rock jaunts, soulful bluegrass ballads and Afro-Celtic blues at Womad, the SA National Arts Festival and in New York, London and Nashville. So how come – outside of Radio 2000 – we never hear songs off his critically-acclaimed albums such as Diamond of A Day and Jungle Of One on the radio? Is it maybe that his existential roots folk pop parables about love, life and having a laugh while growing old are just too literate compared to the easily digestible ‘pop’ of a James Blunt? Currently based in the UK, Auld jets back into the Mother City to premiere slide guitar and blues harmonica-soaked songs off his brand new album In the Bay Again accompanied by regular collaborator Barry van Zyl (drums).

  Backsberg, January 30, 3pm. Entrance is R85 (pre-booked) or R100 (gate). Book at Computicket.