Bubblegum Club

Tag: music

  • The Multi-hyphenate Dancer-Model-Muse-Musician, Manthe Ribane, is Taking The World by Storm.

    Manthe is a vision, even on Skype. I see the muse and the magician in her. She is animated and open, ready to share. Her lips and nails are venetian red, a collection of tiny tattoos decorate the manicured hands she uses to enunciate and express herself. Effervescent and composed, Manthe’s eyes are bright and beautiful as she relays her journey from Johannesburg to the stages of the world. She is on tour in Europe, promoting her musical debut, Dumela 113 EP.  The EP is a collaboration with OKZharp, aka Gervase Gordon. And while this may be her first foray into music as a recording artist, Manthe is an established performer and creator; she performed for Nelson Mandela at the ripe age of 8, danced with the V.I.N.T.A.G.E cru and toured with Die Antwoord, so singing is a logical expansion for her talents.

    While Manthe is reared in performance, she is also a maven of the visual arts. The ongoing collaboration between her and the photographer and director Chris Saunders has produced incredible images intersecting, urbanity, fashion and beauty. The girl is gifted and grounded in her creative power, focused on making her voice heard and using art to tell stories about the self, and South Africa.

    I ask about her experience with Die Antwoord and I’m thrilled to hear that she manifested the opportunity by sheer will and appreciation of their art. From obsessing over them as style icons, she met them per chance at a listening party for Zaki Ibrahim. Die Antwoord were intrigued and enamoured by her and the rest is history. The power of art and aesthetics to connect people is vivified in the online relations and cross-border collaborations happening between artists globally.  Manthe went on to shoot a video and tour with them as a dancer. Now she sits somewhere in Switzerland promoting her music and regaling me with stories about her siblings and how dreams are manifested from surrounding oneself with love and like minds. I fumble around for an enlightened response, she sees me and says, “Sometimes it is okay not to be cool, and just focus on your craft and your loved ones.” The pressures of the entertainment industry are well documented and it is not every artist who survives the late nights and sycophancy to inspire others to dedicate themselves to art forsaking the ills of the business for what is truly important.

    As we’re about to sign off Manthe imparts some of her inspirations to me, she mentions Mary Sibande, Nonku Phiri, Busi Mhlongo and Grace Jones, women who subvert the established and homogenous attitudes around art and beauty through powerful and honest art works. Women like her; magicians and muses, dark skinned dream girls.

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  • FAKA Release New Track

    FAKA, the performance artist pairing of Fela Gucci and Desire Marea, has dropped a new single. In their role as pioneers for sexual identity and style the duo have named the track ‘Isifundo Sokuqala’, (the first lesson) and it described as Ancestral Gqom-Gospel. The song is ethereal and exquisite, listen to it here.

  • BUBBLEGUMCLUB NIGHTS – FAKA

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  • UMSWENKO: Johannesburg’s Post Sub-cultural movement

    The earliest existing use of the hashtag UMSWENKO can be found on a May. 31, 2012 photo posted by @1phiko (Phiko Mditshwa) a member of and digital co-ordinator for the rap crew Boyzn Bucks. The image posted was a screenshot of Siyabonga Ngwekazi aka “Scoop Makhathini” performing in Khaya “Bhubesii” Sibiya’s music video for the track “Members Only” (Scoop and Bhubesii also happen to be members of Boyzn Bucks). Nine hundred and two days later, the hashtag has been used over 8000 times, in what seems to be the embrace of a post-subcultural approach to the creation of youth cultural identity in South Africa’s emerging black middle-class.

     

    Swank is an English word, which means to “display one’s wealth, knowledge or achievements in a way that is intended to impress others” (The Oxford Dictionary, 2014). It is through the appropriation of this word into the Zulu vernacular that “swenka” and #UMSWENKO have their roots.

    Portrait of swenka, Adolphus Mbuyisa (photo by Jamal Nxedlana)

    In the Zulu language “uswenka” is someone who is well dressed, that is the premise on, which “swenking” (the subculture) was later formed. Mr Ngubane, chairman of Iphimbo Scathamiya and Swenka Music Organisation believes that “swenka’s” were around in Johannesburg, as early as the 1920’s. He says that “swenking” had a code, “there was a way of behaving and a way of dressing”.

     

    The latest incarnation of the English word swank, is the hashtag UMSWENKO, which shows, through its remix of the word swenka, consideration of the words historical and cultural significance. At the same time though, by remixing the word swenka it signals an attempt to assign additional meaning to it. Adding “um” as a prefix to the word swenka, changes it grammatically. It changes from verb to noun and in doing so creates a word that denotes a much broader youth cultural-identity. That identity, in its outlook is unified only by its post-modern attitude, which legitimises affiliation with many “different” identities. Everything from footwear, to clothes, rings, bags, watches, hair, the body, “combos”, dance, music, alcohol, cars, electronics, events and even work, have been hash tagged UMSWENKO. And there are no rules governing how they should be appropriated or consumed. Nor is the consumption of commodities “practiced as a strategy of resistance” as was common in subcultural movements. UMSWENKO can be understood better through post-subcultural theory, which envisages “consumption as creative process of youth style distinction” (Bennett 1999). Thats not to say though that there isn’t a predominant style underpinning the hashtag. Currently streetwear, in particular the sneaker and the bucket hat, are the most significant symbols of the trend.

     

    Solo artist and Boyzn Bucks crew member Smiso Zwane aka Okmalumkoolkat is the embodiment of the trend. His image, impersonations of his image, as illustrations and renders populate the feed, together with images of Rikhado Makhado aka Riky Rick, another member of the Boyzn Bucks crew. If Zwane was instrumental in coining and continuing to reimagine what UMSWENKO means then Makhodo, with his mass-appeal is certainly the Reason the trend has gone viral. The release of Dj Speedsta’s track Hangout, which features a verse where Riky Rick riffs on the hook “Umswenko! rip it! Umswenko!” of upcoming Boyzn Bucks single “Umswenkofontein” coincides with the period the hashtag really began taking off.

    History will credit Okmalumkoolkat for UMSWENKO as he first embedded it into popular culture in mid-2010 (before Instagram was even a thing) when he recited the lines “umswenko is a must, sidume njengesinkwa” on the LV track “Boomslang”, which was released through London based label Hyperdub. The “power of consumer images, objects and texts”, which Roberts (2007) feels “evoke heightened levels of reflexivity among youth” cannot be discounted though, as they provide valuable insight into the complex “cultural terrain” within, which the trend emerged. (Bennett, 2011).

     

    The concept of terrain now includes the virtual realm as well, which allows identity to be constructed through posting as opposed to purchasing. UMSWENKO has also been hash tagged on other social networking and blogging platforms signalling perhaps, the beginning of a new chapter in South African youth movements. It is however Boyzn Bucks’ embrace of “individual lifestyle and consumption choices” (Shildrick, T. A. and MacDonald, R. 2006) within the framework of a collective that will define post-subcultural movements in South Africa. Okmalumkoolkats juxtapositional expressions “uptownskhothane” or “internationalpantsula” (both are also hashtags) perfectly sum up the emerging sentiment. The youth does not need to identify as local or as international, they can be both at the same time. They can be whoever they want to be no boundaries…VOETSEK!