Ronald Atkins Jazz CDs of the week Discussing jazz and how the free-wheeling Sixties changed the rules, the double bass is often singled out for its newly liberated role. Regarded as the workhorses of bebop, pounding the beat in the background, bassists now moved towards the front. As a member of Ornette Coleman’s original quartet, […]
Charl Blignaut On stage in Johannesburg `Eskus me,” says a heavily pregnant Lila Luna-Skya in her bruised and broken English, “Uh know is not very glamorous when you hav to give birth on stage .” But I mean what can a girl do? Particularly when she’s a foreigner in a foreign country. And not just […]
Richard Williams LUSH LIFE: A BIOGRAPHY OF BILLY STRAYHORN by David Hajdu (Granta, R89,95) Jazz has produced several memorable threnodies – one thinks of John Lewis’s lament for Django Reinhardt or Charles Mingus’s salute to Lester Young – but none more affecting than Blood Count, recorded by the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1967, a few […]
David Shapshak Buying a cellphone is easy. Upgrading to a new phone when your contract expires, isn’t. You can either just go out and buy yourself the latest hot item to hit the shelves, or play the sophisticated marketing game which enticed you to buy your contract in the first place: sign up for another […]
Our young sport stars have become role models for their fans, writes Bongani Siqoko They may not be big stars and big names in the league of Ronaldo, Mike Tyson or Tiger Woods yet, but they are certainly riding the crest of the wave in their chosen sports. They are still young and have a […]
In the hierarchy of crimes it is the murderer who is regarded with particular distaste and in the pantheon of murderers there is none who evokes quite as much horror as the poisoner. There is, therefore, something inevitable about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission winding up its work with the disclosure of a poisoning conspiracy […]
Some call burning flesh a `rite of passage’. Others say it’s an ugly throwback to slavery. But it’s a hot fashion statement, writes Lonnae O’Neal Parker Imagine a carefully fashioned coat-hanger, slow-roasted over the blue-green flame of a Magic Chef range, heading for the fleshy expanse of your upper arm, your chest or the side […]
Alex Sudheim On show in Durban As a storyteller, Alson Ntshangase is more of a Dostoevsky than a Wordsworth. His darkly glowing paintings betray the workings of a mind far more interested in the skull beneath than the skin above. “If I start painting a rose I feel I am wasting my paint because I […]
Carlton Centre in downtown Johannesburg is flooded by hundreds of young people during weekends. They file around the circular ring at the entrance on the first floor where they peer admiringly at displays of shiny new BMWs two floors below. Others mill around the corridors, visiting shop windows and restaurants. The scene is repeated in […]
Film-maker Wong Kar-Wai tells Rob Yates about his gay road movie, Happy Together, and about his other life It can get to be a bind, being the “most fashionable film director on the planet” (The Face magazine). Seriousness intrudes. People demand explanations, want to talk art. Why can’t they see that this movie- making lark […]