Tag: Kitchener’s Carvery Bar

Bubblegum Club Mix Volume 12 by Nandele

Maputo based beatmaker drops an exclusive mix for Bubblegum Club while on a South African x Mozambican collaborative residency with Felix Laband and others.

Nandele is one of 6 artists currently participating in a cultural exchange residency between South African and Mozambican artists called Colagem Co! The collaborative residency is funded by Pro Helvetia JHB and kicked off on 26 June in Maputo. All the participants arrive in Johannesburg this weekend, where you can catch Nandele’s South African debut show at Kitcheners on 1 July. The event will be a real culture clash between MZ & ZA. Nandele will be playing alongside Felix Laband (post his Maputo-based residency), Mozambican born Dub Rui (WEheartDUB) and DJ Danger Ingozi. There will be live visuals provided by the artists on residency.

I had a quick word with Nandele Maguni to find out a bit more about this mix, his other work and what he is busy with at the moment.

Please tell us a little bit about this mix?

This mix its part of series I’ve been doing, the first one I launched on my birthday last year, so this one is the second one on the series and it was recorded live at a hip hop festival called “Amor a Camisola”. This mix its all about I’ve been listening to during the times, beats and songs that I listen in small get together with friends, its a great way to test new tunes so I can see how my friends react to the tunes.

How do your mixes/DJ sets differ from your live productions? Does this mix comprise of sounds that inspire your productions?

My mixing or dj sets are quite different from my live shows, it’s all music that I am listening to at the time and I want to share with the crowd. My live shows are more energetic and aggressive, it’s mostly driven by how I feel on the day of the performance. My dj sets are like compilations of artists that inspire me.

What will you be doing in Johannesburg this Saturday? What can we expect to hear at Kitcheners?

In Johannesburg I’ll be performing new material for my new album ‘Likumbi’ that is coming out this year and some new edits I’ve done so far.

At Kitcheners this Saturday the crowd should expect a performance inspired by Makonde initiation rites which is the meaning of my album title ‘Likumbi’, so it’s going to be a very dark and a heavy experience.

This album was actually built on the fear I felt during the time I was initiated at Mueda village when I experienced Likumbi, so this will be the atmosphere of my music during my live performance.

When did you start producing?

I started producing 5 years ago, but I wasn’t sure of the music i was doing. When I was introduced to Ableton then everything changed. I don’t know why but I started to share my music on Soundcloud with odd names and with friends, sometimes on DJ sets at Dolce Vita, which is a pub in Maputo where I had a residency. It was just to see people’s reaction to the music. So I had positive feedback and then started working on my first EP Argolas Deliciosas (available at nandele.bandcamp.com).

What are your influences regarding your music and how would you describe your music?

My music is influenced by my country and everything that has had an impact on my life, whether positive or negative. My Makonde tribe for example was the main influence for my new material. But in terms of artists I am mainly influenced by Pretty Lights, Flying Lotus and Nosaj Thing.

You mentioned you have an upcoming album called ‘Likumbi’. Can you give us a little bit of information on that?

‘Likumbi’ is a very personal album. It’s about the initiations rite I went through when I was 12 years old, and the Mozambican political climate.

Its an album that has a different dynamic to my previous EP. It is more experimental and it draws on all of my musical influences from drum and bass, ambient music, big beat, trip hop, hip hop, trap, heavy metal and tribal chants.

Please tell us about your collaborative work with visual artist Ricardo Pinto Jorge.

Ricardo and I have been working together since his first exposition during a residency I curated for a spot called Arte no Parke. From that point forward we’ve been working together ever since. He is the designer for most of my projects, and at this moment I am creating the music for his upcoming exhibition Bits of Maputo which is going to be launched this year.

What else are up to at the moment?

At this moment I have been working on a project with different artists in the Maputo hip hop scene, working on my project The Mute Band – we’ve done some big festivals this year like Azgo and Bushfire, and at the moment we are working on our Rumble in the Jungle Tour. The Likumbi tour is also coming soon. But I am working actually right now on the Colagem Co! project which is a collaboration between Mozambican artists and South African artists. It’s like a dream come true because through this project I am able to collaborate with Felix Laband who is an artist that I admire very much.

Whats next for Nandele?

I am working on The Mute Band debut album, and the second installment for the Argolas Deliciosas. But I would like to tour in South Africa and the world so I’ll be working very hard to make that happen. I see myself collaborating a lot through the next years, and working on projects like making music for short films and contemporary dance pieces.

Stream/buy Nandele’s Argolas Deliciosas EP over at his bandcamp page, and find out more about the Colagem Co! project over here and here.

27 June 2017
Follow Me Down to the Rose Parade – the lyrical sounds of conscious criticality

Beneath a canopy of banana leaf palms on a summer afternoon, a sweet voice delivers critical personal politics with vibrant enthusiasm. Gently tussled brunette locks move rhythmically in the breeze. The contagious smile that radiates an abundance of warmth, gleams through Colleen Balchin. Otherwise known as Rosie Parade, her sparkling eyes can’t help but dazzle and charm all who cross her path.

Rosie Parade first officially graced the decks in 2012. The sound of her set was carried by the August winds on Womxn’s Day. A year or so before that on a less formal occasion, the whispery vocals of Elliott Smith reverberated throughout the floor as one of the first songs she played out. A daunting and tentative moment, an immersion into sound. After her debut, Riaan Botha – the partnering entity of Broaden a New Sound – declared her Rosie Parade, a play on the name of her favorite Elliott Smith song.

The creative manifestation of Rosie Parade culminated from a long and complex relationship with music. Colleen had begun by attending Punk Rock gigs in Edenvale at the tender age of fourteen years old. Music had always resonated with her, however her interest fully emerged in the formative years of romping around in clubs to dance-punk.

Her diverse taste has been cultivated over the years. In all her experience, one of the sentiments that she holds dearest is that the curation of a mix has “gotta sound like you”. The notion of remaining true to oneself is at the center of her practice as an artist. She describes the most poignant moments of performing any set is looking out into the sea of faces from behind the decks and seeing someone dancing with their eyes closed. A blissful moment of complete enthrallment. An activation of audience.

Colleen engages in multiple roles within the industry. Predominantly based out of the well-loved Kitchener’s Carvery Bar, she often has the opportunity of working the door. The idea of the ‘magic mix’ – most notoriously cultivated by Berlin’s Berghain & Panorama Bar – requires being discerning of one’s potential audience and constructing a fairly strict door policy as a means of ensuring that patrons have the best possible time. “It’s a little bit of a lot of different things, so that everything can be its own flavour.”

Kitchener’s is at the heart of her short-term project, articulating a desire to create a space in which people are able to enjoy being open and break down interpersonal boundaries whilst fostering local talent. She says that, “there shouldn’t be a sense of exclusivity, there should be a sense of inclusivity.”

Her background in theatre, having graduated with an Honours in Dramatic Arts from Wits, nurtured a relationship with this form of the Arts. After leaving university, she discovered the mesmerizing space of Johannesburg night-clubs. “You’ve got the flow of everything throughout the night; the joint experience, the performance aspect”, they all act in unison.

This became a space in which she could use the transferable skills and established passion to further expand and engage with the platform. “Kitchener’s is like a big performance piece to me. I know who my actors are; the girls at the booth…the DJ, the door staff and now I’m trying to get the bar tenders in there also” she says playfully.

The comparison continues, “In a theatre production there is catharsis at the end: there’s a problem, you solve it, and then there is catharsis. I feel like in a club there is a lot of opportunity for catharsis, whether or not there is an explicit problem, there is that sense of something having happened at the end of the night…and that shit’s good for people.” Colleen aims to generate that feeling through both her work on the door and as Rosie Parade.

As part of the larger project of societal unlearning and healing, the Pussy Party developed in May last year. “It felt like an obvious step by the time we realized we could do it” as the bar’s ‘student night’ she began to unpack what that means conceptually, “it’s about experimentation, it’s a space to learn”.

The result has manifested as a series of DJ workshops for womxn and all-femme lineups. “This rape culture shit, in this country, in this city, in Kitchener’s. So many womxn will say that they won’t come out because they get hassled.” Colleen is determined to change that one step at a time. Pussy Party was a way to create a space in response to the systematic violence enacted upon womxn and their bodies on a daily basis.

Historically, “if you look at disco culture there is that sense of community and inclusiveness and a sense of reshaping toxic social dynamics.” Part of her project is to utilize skills and resources in a social space of collaboration to change and reframe gendered relationships.

“Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, revelling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community.”

― bell hooks

Special thanks to the Summit Club for supporting the shoot.

Shoot Credits

Look 1: Rosie wears blouson by H&M, jeans and boots by Diesel, accessories stylists own.

Look 2: Rosie wears hoodie by H&M, jeans and boots by Diesel, accessories stylists own.

Look 3: Rosie wears t-shirt by H&M, accessories stylists own.

Photography by Chris Saunders

Styling by Jamal Nxedlana

Hair & Makeup by Orli Meiri

Photographers assistant – Tk Mogotsi

Stylists assistant – Silke Holzschuher

8 February 2017
If Kitchener’s (KCB) is like a home

“There are venues and there are institutions”, I was once told: a friend attempting to draw categories in Johannesburg’s night-time cartography. Undoubtedly, Kitchener’s (or KCB) falls into the latter group. It’s the ‘go-to’ club when you have no prior plans. It’s the comfort of knowing the sound and crowd to expect when you arrive. It’s the ease of no dress code and affordable entrance fees. It’s the knowledge that you’ll likely see at least ten other people you know. “If the question is, where do we go to party [tonight], we are the first call”, says DJ/manager Andrew Clements.

Among the audiences, artists and curators of KCB are those who speak of it as ‘home’. “Home isn’t where you come from”, said author Pierce Brown, “It’s where you find light when all grows dark.”

If KCB is a home, it is one whose family stretches back generations. The pub/hotel was built in 1902 and is regarded as the second oldest building in Johannesburg. It is a testament to the historical centrality of our night venues. Radium Beer Hall, Kitchener’s Carvery Bar (KCB), Guildhall Pub have watched generations of dreamers and workers spill their histories over bar counters — wrestling with the possibilities and futures of the city. Marc Latilla, one of the first DJs to ever play at KCB, has sought to archive the venue’s history: another indication that night-dwellers are often keepers of suppressed urban narratives.

According to Latilla, by the end of the 18^th century, Braamfontein had transformed from farmlands into a thriving middle-class suburb. The Milner Park Hotel, now known as Kitchener’s, was built in 1902, surrounded by German businesses. It served as a drinking hole for British troops, as well as postal riders on their way to Pretoria. In 1902, towards the end of the Second South African War, Lord Milner had a meeting with the notorious commander of the British forces, General Lord Kitchener, in the newly-built hotel. Kitchener had been a brutal warlord: primary instigator of South Africa’s concentration camps, in which thousands of Boers and black Africans were killed, mostly women and children. The name ‘Kitchener’s’ is thought to have arisen from this “auspicious” meeting.

If KCB is a home, this is the family’s ugly origins: it’s ancestral elder, a colonial brute, whose legacy continues to cause disquiet among his descendants. Still, his portrait hangs from the mantelpiece, above the figurative fireplace, where his great grandchildren dance and cuss and caress and worship, along with the descendants of his victims. These young ones burst through at night, trampling on grandma’s wooden floors, spilling on the old carpet, brushing past the velvet wallpaper. Each time, confronting history with a cocktail of detachment, denial, and dissent. It is a story of “dancing on graves”, of repossessing haunted spaces. You see it not only here but in the parties at the old train station, Halloween blowouts at the Voortrekker Monument, projected images of Hector Peterson at Soweto’s Zone 6.

The new generation of revelers took root at KCB in 2009, when Andrew Clements began using and hiring out the old hotel for parties. “This used to be just an old man’s club”, Andrew explains,“where a bunch of 60-year-olds would come every day at lunchtime, have a few beers, and then come back again after work. By 6 or 7 the place would close up”. But as DJ’s re-imagined the dusty Bar and Carvery, and the parties grew, and KCB quickly became a living room for young creatives, experimenters, hipsters, and students.

If KCB is a home, then, like any other home, it is not just about love, safety, memory and identity. There is also domestic power and sources of conflict. A strong sense of community often comes with a shared culture: away of dressing, speaking, moving on the dance floor, that has the potential to alienate others. Money, too, can also mess with families. One regular told me that he experienced a class territorialism that would make it difficult for someone who regularly partied at a tavern to party at KCB. To add to this are gender disparities, with femme bodies particularly under threat. Elders and relatives may try to intervene: we’ve seen dance floor dissent at the monthly Pussy Parties, the introduction of a female bouncer, regular and recognizable door staff, and a huge diversity of music genres to boost inclusivity. But families, inevitably, are sources of both contest and comfort.

If KCB is a home, it is one built on music. For years, DJ’s Rosie Parade and Danger Ngozi, of Broaden a New Sound, have curated its sonic identity,rooted in quality, pioneering music. There are family reunions with regular artists and promoters: 2 Sides of the Beat, Kid Fonque, BeatNN and Subterranean Wavelength. And then there are visits from distant relatives. This year: Tendai ‘Baba’ Maraire, Hussein Kalonji, Tama Sumo and Lakuti. And of course there are family events: Disco de la Mode is a group trip to the beach; Below the Bassline a spiritual gathering around the dinner table, and Zonke Bonke like your uncle’s birthday party.The soundtrack is not from your radio or television. It’s the specially-curated playlists that this family has come to love: exchanging sounds, travels and collections across time and space. Like all good household gatherings, the food keeps coming till the early hours of the morning. At 4am, you’re helping your exhausted cousin out the door. And, as author Wendy Wunder once said of a home: “It feels good to leave. Even better to come back”.

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1 February 2017