#Art

Before this past weekend, the last music festival I attended was the legendary HFStival – sometime around the turn of the millennium in a grimy, beer-sodden stadium in southeast Washington D.C. It was oppressively humid and there were more than 70,000 attendees, mostly suburban kids aged 14 to 25. There was moshing. With the exception of my favorite ska/punk band, Goldfinger, I don’t remember who played.

Actress Kharyshi Wiginton, performing in Colours of the Diaspora*. She might be too much for most people, but I couldn’t get enough of her.*

Last night I was invited to see a show called Colours of the Diaspora at the Market Theatre Laboratory. The Laboratory, affiliated with the iconic Market Theatre, is an experimental theatre venue and drama school for underprivileged artists, located inside a cavernous converted bus factory in Newtown.

If you are in South Africa and don’t reside under a rock, then you’ve likely heard about the controversy raging over an artist’s portrait of South African President Jacob Zuma, called “The Spear”. If you don’t live in South Africa, or do reside under a rock, you can read about the controversy here.

On Wednesday morning, my friends Bing and Tein Po picked me up and took me with them to Soweto. We went to a part of Soweto called Zola, where we visited the cooperative that produces Shwe Shwe Poppis.

Part 1 of a 3-part series. Read Part 2 here and Part 3 here.

It’s time to tell you what I was doing in the Western Cape last week, besides bumming around Bo-Kaap. The real purpose of my trip was to visit the Cederberg Wilderness, 240 kilometers northwest of Cape Town, and participate in a hiking adventure called the Cederberg Heritage Route.