Dim the lights, open the popcorn and let Charles Leonard play you his favourite songs about movies and actors on this mixtape, with tracks dedicated to celluloid heroes, villains, aliens, vampires, lovers, fighters and sex bombs
For this mixtape Charles Leonard has a stack of books as high as his stack of records – come and curl up with this unputdownable mix of songs about books and writers
This mixtape, packed with tasty tunes from around the world, will titillate your palate and ears with music about veggies, fish and stews, as well as fruit, dessert and cake. There’s even a song with a recipe for a Brazilian shrimp stew
This mixtape gives you 38 musical reasons to be cheerful. It’s brim-full of happy songs from across genres, borders and generations, guaranteed to put a perma-grin on your face
Instead of sulking in the corner, the vocal residents Brixton in Jo’burg are finding solutions that are progressive and inclusive
On his eclectic, monthly mixtape Charles Leonard is celebrating with some classics, the quirkiest samples, favourite female rappers, head-nodding 90s party jams, deep underground rap and an obscure isiZulu hip-hop party-starter
Between 1936 and 1975 a radio station subverted young Jo’burgers all the way from Mozambique. LM Radio’s highly effective ad department came for their money, but it was its DJs that took their souls with the freewheeling “hippy” music that they played. Historian Charles van Onselen explains how that made the apartheid elders at the SABC spitting mad
In the 1980s Capital Radio 604 was more than just a cool station broadcasting from the hippy haven of Port St John’s on the Wild Coast. It’s small, but effective news team was based in Jo’burg, from where they tackled the state, one bulletin at a time
For this mixtape Charles Leonard has picked his favourite subversive songs from around the globe and tells their fascinating and often curious stories.
It includes an infamous drinking song
Charles Leonard is taken on a walking tour by the Rand Club’s first black, female chairperson. He also gets Jo’burg’s funniest stand-up comedian to tell him his funniest Jo’burg joke
In this episode Charles Leonard examines two types of Jo’burg noise: one made by religious humans in an inner city suburb, the other a familiar avian racket.
Charles Leonard asks three women from different backgrounds about the idea of being outsiders, about being Jo’burgers and what this city means to them
In this third episode of ‘This is Jo’burg’, Charles Leonard hears from a can-do homeless person who regulates traffic at intersections during the constant power cuts – he explains why he started doing it
Charles Leonard has picked 28 of his favourite songs from our continent. Be ready to be entertained, surprised and hopefully thrilled by his celebratory selection of old and new African tunes
In this second episode of ‘This is Jo’burg’ an unconventional historian takes Charles Leonard to that spot where the city of gold was supposedly born
In the first episode of “This is Jo’burg”, the poet, educator, mother, memoirist, activist, Nelson Mandela’s former chief of staff and ambassador to the US and France, Barbara Masekela goes on a road-trip with Leonard of her beloved Johannesburg. She tells the stories, recounts the memories and expresses hopes for her city
Where does Workers’ Day come from?
Why do we have weekends? What should we listen to on weekends?
And why is Brenda Fassie’s first hit song essential for your weekend?
The Ampersand Mixtape aims to bring back some of the original mixtape joy, albeit without the physical cassette and with an adapted format..
"Fassie lived according to her own rules. That’s what made her political."
UK producer and DJ Charles Webster talks about playing at this weekend’s Churn 2015 and his latest album.
The sax legend, who ‘graduated from the University of James Brown’, on the joys of leading his own band.
Tumi Mogorosi’s album, Project Elo, brings together the eloquent sounds of accomplished jazz musicians and opera singers.
Charles Leonard writes about his vet’s stillborn question to Leonard Cohen and the joys of reggae.
Even a hugely popular right-wing rock star sometimes needs an agony uncle – especially when his "army" fails to live up to his expectations.
The Future Sound of Mzansi is a compilation album of rarities, remixes and collaborations that will be distributed across the continent.
When the SABC’s long-serving newsreader delivered his final
bulletin, many viewers shed a tear — and so did Riaan Cruywagen, although not on air.
In a world renowned for superficiality, Gert-Johan Coetzee’s down-to-earth qualities set him apart.
These days the ANC’s loudest voices are those of populists, racists, opportunists and reactionaries.
There can’t be many other outsiders as qualified to hold forth on the labour movement in SA than Andy Stern, who was here on a flying visit this week.
Celebrated South African author Andre Brink says his 21st novel – a story about slavery in the Cape – was the most difficult of his career to write.
The wild child of the local art scene enjoys his whisky and also works damned hard.
Cameron van der Burgh gives the Mail & Guardian’s Charles Leonard a stroke-by-stroke account of his record-breaking race at the Olympics.