Given the preponderance of trash-talking, oversexed cardboard cut outs clogging up the airwaves, you’d be forgiven for thinking that urban contemporary pop had finally overdosed on its own booty babe banality. Until you see EJ Von Lyrik perform live.
? Simultaneously adventurous and entertaining, funny and moving, leftfield and mainstream, the dextrous SA f-emcee offers a stinging rebuke to all the traditional booty-babe myths. Since leaving Godessa, she’s struck out into new territories, cross-fertilising genres, geographies and temporalities on critically-acclaimed albums such as Method in Da Madness and The Human Condition, and continues to transform her musical identity without sacrificing any authenticity. Expect a fiercely original melting pot of genre free funk, rock, dancehall and hip-hop when she performs with her all-star band, The Champions featuring Mpumi Sizani (backing vocals), Grenville Williams (bass), Carlo Thompson (guitar), Andre Swartz (drums), Dubmasta China (percussion and vocals), Mr. Sakitumi (samples and keys) and Teba Shumba (dancehall toastmaster).
Zula Sound Bar & Restaurant, 98 Long Street, Cape Town, September 23, 9pm. Entrance is “worth it.” Tel: 021 425 0551.
? His nimble, darting bass lines have laid down rhythmic challenges for a roll call of South African jazz musicians including saxophonists Dudu Pukwana and Barney Rachabane, trumpeter Duke Makasi and vocalist Abigail Khubeka. He’s anchored the swing for Darius Brubeck’s Afro Cool Concept. His ‘natural rhythm’ underpinned such classic recordings as pianist Abdullah Ibrahim’s African Sun and trumpeter Hugh Masekela’s Sixty. He’s bassist, composer, singer, arranger, and producer, Victor Ntoni. And in jazz circles he’s something of a “living legend”. So how come he isn’t a household name? Artscape’s Imvelo Festival supplies the antidote to any such cultural amnesia with a pair of concerts that pay tribute to one of the Mother City’s most acclaimed jazz sons this weekend. Expect a career-spanning showcase of standards and original that fuse layered call-and-response conversations with cooking Afro-cool conceptualism.
Artscape, September 23 and 24, 8pm. Entrance is R80. Book at Computicket.