RHYTHMS FROM AFRICA:

Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje – 9 October 1876 – 19 June 1932

Length 24 minutes and 8 seconds

Sol Plaatje writer, statesman, publisher, journalist entrepreneur and great orator had a vision of a fair equal and just South Africa, which encompassed every language group. His accomplishments are well documented in numerous publications, his own and others. He lived as an African in a society where what was white was acceptable, was civilized, yet he fought to record and preserve his language. People who know his life story and his work explain the values he lived by and how he acquired them.

Poet Laureate Keorapetse William Kgositsile  ‘Bra Willie’ 1938 – 2018
Length 23 minutes and 15 seconds

The artistic development, and vision of the Poet Laureate of the Nation, Keorapetse William Kgositsile, commonly known as “Bra Willie” are revealed. He is seen performing with a jazz band, as he often did when living in exile in New York. He was a significant influence on the black arts movement in the US. It allows Bra Willie to tell his life story, rooted in travel and the values inculcated in him by his mother and grandmother

Aaron Jack Lerole ‘Big voice Jack’ Penny Whistler 1940 – 2003

Length 26 minutes 18 seconds

Aaron “Big Voice” Jack Lerole (1940 – 12 March 2003) was a singer, penny whistle player, composer and a leading performer in the kwela music of 1950s South Africa. In this short film, for which he was interviewed just a few years before he passed, he tells us how it all started and provides a wonderful demonstration of the basics of different South African musical forms: marabi, tshaba tshaba, kwela and umbhaqanga. We also see him in a virtuoso two penny whistle performance at the Whale well at Iziko museum with jazz pianist, Hilton Schilder, guitarist Jonny Blondell and ‘hosepipe’ performer, Pedro Espi-Sanchez. We catch a glimpse of Pops Mohamed playing the Kora. The film shows the indigenous roots of the pennywhistle in the Pedi ‘skoti’ performances and shows how Kwela was born on the streets of Johannesburg.

Ghoema
Length 18 minutes 52 seconds

The early slave history at the Cape created a creole culture.   This film explains the origins of Ghoema Rhythms in that creole culture and their ongoing vitality in Cape music today. The story is told by three celebrated musicians who have all passed on in the past ten years. It is therefore a unique insight into a musical knowledge, which is largely un-recorded. Vincent Kolbe, jazz pianist, Robbie Jansen. saxophonist, and Errol Dyers guitarist all speak and perform. We also see footage of the Carnival groups, the “klopse’ practicing before carnival and then on the streets of Cape Town.

Robert Edward Jansen ‘Robbie Jansen’ Jazz Musician 1949 – 2010
Length 23 minutes 44 seconds

Robbie Jansen tells how he became a popular and original saxophonist, flautist and singer. He transitioned from working in a knitting factory and being a pop singer on weekends to playing original music with the leading musicians of his time and making his own albums. As a young man he heard the Salvation Army band his father played in and listened to English pop music but ironically when he won a band competition which included a trip to London he heard the original music of a band called Chicago. Coming back to South Africa he explored his roots and became a leading proponent of the Ghoema sound in jazz as well as playing regularly in the black townships with leading jazz musicians. He made an album called ‘Vastrap Island’, a comment on the restrictions of life under apartheid and was a contributor to the famous track of Abdullah Ibrahim, ‘Manenberg is where it is happening’.   Robbie in the end played music to relieve the tedium of working class life, to make people happy.

Jazz Conversations
Length 21 minutes 40 seconds

Barney Rachabane jazz saxophonist, Dorothy Masuku jazz singer , Sokhaya Charles Nkosi artist and jazz afficianado, Bhekisiza Khoza, jazz guitarist , open up to Fitzroy Ngcukana  jazz singer and impresario about what it is that makes South African Jazz uniquely South African. Jonas Gwangwa, trombonist also contributes.

Louis Moholo – Free Jazz Drummer
Length 20 minutes 52 seconds

The last surviving member of the Blue Notes, the extraordinarily exciting free jazz drummer, Louis Moholo performs with talented young pianist Kyle Sheperd and tells his story in a conversation with artist, poet and musician, Lefifi Tladi. They discuss the important contribution of bands like the Blue Notes to avant garde jazz , especially in Europe

Seipati Bulane Hopa – Intuitive Designer
Length 24 minutes 55 seconds

Seipati shares the inspiration for her clothes: “When painters look at landscape, they sometimes they see beyond the landscape and when sculptors will take a log and create something of great beauty out of it. When I see clothes I honestly feel they are talking to me, they want my response, you know. So I take them from where they are as created beings and give them life because I feel that there is an exchange of fair sharing between me and that because they are waiting to be taken care of and be brought to life and that is exactly what I do.” In this short film Seipati explains her approach to design, how it is formed by the indigenous  styles of South Africa and demonstrates the clothes she creates and wears.

Makwarela Elizabeth Makahane – Potter
Length 18 minutes 50 seconds

Ceramic artist/potter Makwarela Elizabeth Makahane tells who she is and how she makes her beautiful pots, demonstrating together with and for her granddaughters the methods and knowledge involved in this ancient art. From collecting the clay to cleaning it, pounding it and preparing it, to shaping and decorating the pots and then firing them.  She reflects on how the system of art exchange has changed and her hopes for this art to continue.

Sbonelo Tau Luthuli

Length 23 minutes 44 seconds

Sbonelo is a talented and intellectually aware ceramic artist from Durban, now in his early 30’s. His ceramic pots tap into a collective ancient knowledge of ceramics as much as they are a deeply personal and dynamic contemporary art expression. In the short film he explains his motivations and life experiences whilst we see examples of his extraordinary work.

Sokhaya Charles Nkosi – Artist & Art educator
Length 18 minutes 50 seconds

Born in Durban in 1949 and involved in drawing and painting from primary school until now.   Then and now the struggle to get an arts education is huge. Charles describes how he and his young friends had no art education but were pregnant with desire to express themselves, so found sketch books and taught themselves using comics as inspiration. He pays tribute to his mentor Eric Ngcobo who encouraged him to do art and carry on sketching. Richly illustrated with Charles’ vibrant abstract paintings this short film shows his lifelong commitment to sharing the skills he struggled to obtain. This film describes in painful detail the struggle for a young talented artist to make a way in his chosen field.

Joseph Ndlovu  - Master weaver
Length 18 minutes 55 seconds

Between 1974 and 1976 Ndlovu studied art at the ELC Art and Craft Centre at Rorke’s Drift, and obtained a fine arts diploma. He has organised youth and community projects in art, drama, dance, creative writing, craft photography and informal education. He has taken part in a number of group exhibitions in South Africa and his work is represented in a number of public institutions in this country. A quiet man, known as the greatest weaver in South Africa, Joseph talks about his art and what inspires him for the first time. We see him at work on his loom completing a commission of a weaving of an Ernest Mancoba painting for the Constitutional Court Art Trust

Omar Badsha’s eye – Artist/Photographer
Length 27 minutes 25 seconds

Omar Badsha, now in his 71st year has been a social documentary photographer, artist, activist and intellectual for much of his life. Growing up in the port city of Durban before the impact of group areas he was exposed to many different cultures, religions and ideas and learned to navigate between them. A school drop-out, who has just received an honorary doctorate, he has always been an active intellectual keen to record the tumultuous events he lived through. He has done this as an artist and as a photographer.

Peter Clarke – 1929 – 2014 Visual Artist – Writer – Poet
Length 24 minutes

As a young man Peter was denied access to galleries and couldn’t afford art school so learnt though going to bookshops and leafing through art history books bit by bit. He took inspiration from a newspaper article in 1948 reporting that Gerard Sekoto, a black man was going to study art in Paris. This made him feel that he, also a black man and son of a domestic worker and a dock worker could be an artist too. His paintings and prints record the life and fortitude of his community and express his fervent belief in holding onto hope and exploring knowledge as a way forward. His vision of community-based art is shared by his two friends/comrades, Lionel Davis and James Matthews

Lefifi Tladi – Poet & Painter
Length 22 minutes 10 seconds

Lefifi Tladi, poet, painter and musician, explains how aesthetics are formed by the alertness of the senses. He engages some young poets comparing conditions of his youth and contemporary times and speaks of the importance of preparing work for programmes versus events. We see him in his studio where he talks about indigenous knowledge in relation to his paintings and the important role of women in pre-industrial and cave painting. He stresses the importance of studying in order to read art and interpret music. All of this knowledge was formed by him over a seven-decade life of independent thought and artistic expression. As a young person he influenced the cultural thinking of the Black consciousness movement and still encourages young people to explore their African aesthetic roots today.