This week we visited new media artist Simphiwe Xulu, aka Mr MediaX, at Assemblage Studios to check out the beginnings of the logo he created with Sanele Omari Jali for the “I Make Africa’ project being hosted in Harare. We also share some behind the scenes footage from our latest cover shoot with the talented Zandi Tisani, who let’s us in on what she is working on at the moment. Rosie Parade chats to us about bringing Ikonika over to SA for a teaching residency and her first gig at Kitcheners. Slice Frederico serves us our fashion feature for the week. We also visited the new spot in Braam, Kota Kings, and chatted to co-founder Tankiso Tank Makwela about how they are switching up the way you eat your kota.
Tag: youthculture
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Onyx – The Ultimate Moshers
One thing you don’t necessarily expect to see in Braamfontein are the streets shut down by thousands of kids having a rowdy, but fun, moshpit. Or what looks like a scene from a Nirvana music video being sound-tracked by Kayne West and Desiigner. But that’s exactly the positive energy that the Onyx collective have been generating with their various street market and ‘rage’ events. Bubblegumclub recently had an interview with group member Gondo, who provided us with an insight into the works of this collective of ‘black boys that have good ideas and exceptional vision’.
As he puts it ‘Onyx started as an attempt to make an event that we’d enjoy cause we didn’t like the event scene that people were giving us. We were always turned away because of the way we dressed and how young we were. The music they played at all these other parties weren’t what we’d expected, we wanted alternative music and all the stuff we weren’t hearing on the radio.’
The result has been a series of spectacular carnivals which have gathered major crowds. With regards to the Desiigner mosh-pit, Gondo notes ‘Yeah that shit was crazy! We’re the ultimate moshers. There is no average Onyx event. We always come in, play what we love, encourage the kids to be confident and to let all their aggression and issues out in the Mosh pit. Onyx events go on for as long as the music is playing, or until some official comes through to shut us down- which happened the day of the crazy mosh pit you saw. For our major events such as Street Market and Onyx Rage Festival we garner an attendance of 1500. I think this year is going to be crazier we might see a massive crowd of the kids come out to play in their numbers’.
For the future, Onyx plans to keep delivering special for its niche market.- ‘We’re very rooted in the progression of a culture of confidence and self-sufficiency in South Africa so we’re not going to run to corporations to make more money because of the money. We do it for the people’.
The next Onyx Steet Market takes place in Juta Street Braamfontein on the 09 July, from 13H00- 01H00.
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Creative Open Call announced by the British Council’s Connect ZA Arts Programme
The British Council’s Connect ZA Arts Programme supports, highlights, and extends collaborative cultural exchanges between South Africa and the UK. They work across a wide variety of art forms in order to discover and nurture new and existing talent and connections between young people aged 18 to 35. They’ve been pioneering innovative ways to understand and engage creativity for three successful seasons and, following hot-on-the-heels of the reconceptualization of their visual identity in partnership with Bubblegum Club, are launching their next dynamic and exciting phase through the 2016/17 Creative Open Call.
Whether you are an individual, a small to medium sized creative organisation, or a large scale cultural institution, Connect ZA invites your bold proposal to culminate in a “high quality live, or digital performance, showcase or other public facing event” through the open call titled ‘New Partners, New Projects, New Spaces’. As the call states; “We are looking for a strong mix of projects that may be a combination of more than one art form” but there is particular emphasis on proposals engaging the sectors of live performance and visual art. The call also strongly encourages applications from women in order to try to address issues of their underrepresentation within creative industries.
Connect ZA are eager to back original and potentially ground-breaking new projects that are devised and designed for a contemporary urban context, as well as for the correct age demographic. It is also important that proposals are mutually beneficial for artists, audiences, and participants in both countries and that they are able “to engage and extend reach across multiple digital platforms,” such as social media. There are amounts of up to £3 500, £7 500, and £15 000 available within the three different Creative Categories so, if you have a great idea, but aren’t able to realise it without some financial support, check out the full guidelines here and download the application form here. Take note that applications close on Monday 18 July 2016. Fingers crossed!
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Splash your feed with locally produced content 101: Tumblr blogs to follow
Having read somewhere that local is the new global or was it that global was the new local, I soon found my confusion summed up in the catch phrase “glocal”. The internet can be a confusing space for those looking to inject specifically local creativity onto their glistening screens. In order to help Bubblegum Club readers navigate the inter webs for locally curated tumblr feeds I decided to come up with this little list of helpful hints.
One of the best ways of seeing South African creativity in action is through platforms such as Tumblr where our own creatives share their insights on what is trending and “to die for” on the interwebs. Here are my helpful pick of tumblr sites to help you help fill your message board with content from South African Bloggers and content makers.
According to her site she is a fine art student based in Durban. Her board features tailored grunge looks specific to the urban street scene. She loves her sleek straight cuts and features beautiful jewellery pieces. She also features some beautiful artworks and photography.
With a description of “European born South African Unicorn” I could not but include her as part of my list of blog gems. Her site features plenty of youthful faces in a causal daze with model-like allure. Plenty of pastel background photography with angular architectural shots, if you’re into that sort of thing.
This blog by Cape Town based writer/researcher (her slashie game is hard ya’ll)
Provides a good mix of imagery and writing content both of which feature a South African editorial focus. A good one to follow to bring back some intellectual discourse into your dashboard feed. She also features beautiful poetry and her selfie game is on point.
This blog features the works from the creatures of the successful “The honey” blog. Her photographs are breathtakingly beautiful. Featuring the gritty images of Johannesburg streets and the haunting portraits of its locals. A must see for anyone wanted to be reminded of the bustling intersectional lives us black folks lead.
Who doesn’t want to see that name flashing on their Dashboard early in the Morning! This site boasts an 80s funky fresh theme that’s guaranteed to keep the eyes glued to its screen. Its focus is on illustration, design with mostly hip hop fashion stylzzz. It’s a playful blog and good for a little creative pic me up if you find yourself in a vanilla digital overload funk infused daze.
Honourable mentions.
These creators have already been featured in Bubblegum Club articles but their blogs are still a joy to peruse.
Its name is also of the collective that focuses on textile and design. This blog features images curated by its founder Nkuli Mlageni as she travels the world collecting inspiration. She features the photographs her works throughout their production process and the images of those she encounters on her worldly travels.
The creators of this blog have become somewhat of a controversy since they were last featured on Bubblegum Club over the use of their persona, The Honey, to campaign a popular South African brand. What ever your position, their work is fire and pays homage to a sleek township origin.
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Imraan Christian: The Decolonizing Gaze
Imraan Christian is a young photographer and filmmaker from the Cape Flats whose work is capturing international attention. After graduating from the University of Cape Town in 2014, he was on hand to document the explosive events of Fees Must Fall in October 2015. His photographs are a powerful record of the wild days of student protest erupting across the country, with his keen eye capturing both the passion of the young protesters and the violence of the state response. While much of the media tried to infantilise and criminalise the student’s demands, Christian lets the slogans on placards wielded by demonstrators speak for themselves. An image captured on a march from UCT reads- ‘post-apartheid racist society says: you are poor because you are uneducated. Go get a degree! Colonial elitist universities say you are too poor to take yourself out of poverty. # we are fucked’. Such eloquence contrasts with the brutal images of police meeting students with tear gas, stun grenades and assault. The establishment’s inability to understand young people is captured in a darkly humorous image of higher education minister Blade Nzimande standing behind a gate with a look of total incomprehension while a protest storms around him.
Christian’s powerful photographs quickly went viral on social media, and were syndicated in international publications. But these photographs are just one aspect of his artistic project. His diverse portfolio ranges from the South African Film and Television Awards nominated documentary Jas Boude (co-directed with Georgina Warner) to numerous photography projects . This work is united by the desire to confront structural racism and inequality, and its corrosive effects on the lives of young people. In the series Rise From The Roots, he used the fashion editorial format to ‘subvert and transcend the accepted colonial narrative of a group of black men being dangerous and/or criminals’, by showing the elegant clothes of the ToneSociety collective on the streets of Cape Town. A similar subversion occurs in Jas Boude, which follows a group of skateboarders from the dangerous Valhalla Park into the city centre. Through the film’s intimate focus on character the spatial inequalities of Cape Town, and South Africa more generally, become glaringly apparent. Behind the image of a gilded tourist trap, the city is characterised by catastrophic violence, poverty and trauma. The State is all too happy to have these problems contained in ‘peripheral’ spaces on the Cape Flats. Black and coloured youth are trapped between a lack of formal opportunities, criminal stereotypes and a system eager to send them to the prison or the cemetery. Christian is challenging this bleak picture, through both his work and career. At a young age, he has challenged hateful typecasting of young coloured people by winning international acclaim through his sheer mastery of visual mediums.
His more recent projects blend political documentary and protest art. Death of a Dream is a stunning and disturbing response to state repression, in South Africa and beyond. In it, student activists are decked in funeral black. One stares at the camera with simulated bullet wound, fired by a sinister masked gunmen behind her. The point is clear- both the physical death of young bodies, and the symbolic destruction of their hope for a better future. The photos are staged so perfectly that the activists almost seem like mythological figures of death, their gazes drilling into the viewer’s skull. Along with documenting contemporary South Africa, Christian’s imagery resonates with global issues of power, control and oppression.
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Watch Fight Master, the surreal video from Agord Lean’s collaborative EP “WU”
Agord Lean spent Feburary recording his upcoming EP in the Bubblegum Club project space at Workshop Newtown. He describes the residency as, “strenuous but fruitful” and provides insight into the creative process, emphasising the importance of, “making work and cultivating your own voice”. And realising the incredible scope of creative expression while embracing the changes that come from creating and collaborating.
From an exhibition of zines and paintings, Lean has taken a creative journey through his residency in the space. Through collaboration with other creatives and a mindful, open attitude to art marking an EP, WU, has been produced. Fight Master is the first taste from WU and it is a glimpse into Lean’s esoteric and ethereal soundscape, reflecting space and time of this age and beyond.
WU will be available online this month, it features production from Uncle Party Time, with some creative luminaries on the mic including Dokta Sypzee, Boogy and KillSmith. Lean was kind enough to let me jump on as well; my debut as a recording artist.
Cava the tracklist below, WU drops later this month.
1- Intro,in time (Ft Boogy x Viva)
2- Iyanishiya Ft Dokta Spyzee x KillSmith
3- Find me
4- Illumination prod Uncle Party time
5- Interlude
6- Fight Master
7- Outro
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Disappoint Your Parents is a new zine offering serious insight into generational tensions
‘Disappoint Your Parents’ is a Cape Town based zine which launched its first ‘episode’ this February. As the title indicates, it deals with a range of the ways in which young South Africans can let their elders down, from ‘use of illicit substances, hanging with the wrong crowd or just not having much ambition’.
Although the presentation is flippant, the content offers serious insights into the generational tensions in South African society through a series of personal essays. ‘Young Muslim Girl in the Big Bad World’ explores the pressures patriarchy and religious conservatism exert on women. Another piece offers a biting dissection of white privilege in Michaelis art school- ‘It seems everyone is only concerned with being the coolest but no one cares for being the best. This is a luxury not afforded to us brown people within the creative sphere. Our parents don’t have the gallery hook-ups or internships lined up. This is pure hustle’.
These texts are interspersed with a wide range of drawings and repurposed images. The most successful piece in this issue is the bizarre ‘The Corner Stone Home of Wayward Boys’. Told through a series of posters, fictional alumni like Obama and Mike Tyson praise the institute before a disruptive final appearance by Charlie Sheen.
Zines are a great format for self-expression, which allow creators to bypass media gate-keepers. The self-publishing aspect of zines means that authors are afforded complete creative autonomy, which can sometimes result in beautiful works of uninhibited expression. Zines are also important for documenting political and counter-cultural movements. In particular, since the 1970s zines have been central to promoting punk, feminist and anarchist ideas throughout the world.
Even poorly produced zines can offer a raw snapshot of the cultural context against which it was produced. Fortunately, DYP 1 looks sharp and has swagger. South African university campuses have recently become hotbeds of social conflict, which has also taken on aspects of a generational clash. The government and media often present young people as dangerous and ignorant. Fortunately, zines like this offer witty and sophisticated alternative to this apocalyptic narrative.
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Fifi Cooper and EmTee dominate this year’s MetroFm Awards, reflecting the power of millenials and Hip Hop in South Africa
The South African music industry is a dynamic, ever changing fiefdom and its new ruler is rap. Hip Hop is staking its claim as the music de rigueur and as a mouth piece for the youth as young rappers took home major awards at the MetroFM Music Awards last night. Fifi Cooper won the prestigious Best Female award along with Best Mixtape and Best Produced Album while her label mate EmTee (23) took home 4 awards, including the Listener’s Choice award, Best Hip Hop Album and Best Music Video. The two millenials dominated the wins for the evening, and made serious bank as each category comes with a R100 000 prize. The expansion and opportunities in the African entertainment industry have expanded significantly in the past decade, resulting in more young people making music professionally. As the influence of Kwaito has dwindled and the sound sublimated into other genres, Hip Hop has come to rule the airwaves as rappers become the pop stars of this generation. MetroFM remains at the zenith of the music industry in South Africa and these awards indicate the influence of youth culture on entertainment, while there are established rappers still being recognised with AKA and Cassper Nyovest each taking home awards forBest Hit Single and Best Male album respectively, younger artists are being recognised for their talent and contributions to music in South Africa, a sign of shifting times and trends in the country.
A list of all the winners at this year’s MetroFM awards
SONG OF THE YEAR
Nathi – Nomvula
BEST MALE ALBUM
Cassper Nyovest – Refiloe
BEST AFRICAN POP ALBUM
Nathi – Buyelekhaya
BEST COMPILATION ALBUM
999 music – Summer Ya Di Summer
BEST DANCE ALBUM
Prince Kaybee – Better Days
BEST FEMALE ALBUM
Fifi Cooper – 20FIFI
BEST DUO OR GROUP ALBUM
DBN Nyts – Believe
BEST HIT SINGLE
AKA ft Burnaboy, Khuli Chana, Yanga – Baddest
BEST MUSIC VIDEO
Emtee – Roll Up
BEST HIP HOP ALBUM
Emtee – Avery
BEST URBAN JAZZ ALBUM
Nomfundo Xaluva – From now on
BEST KWAITO ALBUM
DJ Bongz – Game Changer
BEST NEW ARTIST
Fifi Cooper – 20FiFi
BEST R&B SINGLE
Cici – Runaway
BEST REMIX
Emtee – Roll Up Re-Up
BEST URBAN GOSPEL ALBUM
Worship House – True Worship 2015 (Live)
BEST COLLABORATION
AKA ft Burna Boy, Khuli Chana & Yanga – Baddest
BEST PRODUCED ALBUM
Fifi Cooper – 20FiFi
BEST STYLED ALBUM
Cici – Runaway
LISTENER’S CHOICE AWARD
Emtee
ONE AFRICA AWARD
Burna Boy
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Arthur Mafokate
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Durban’s viral dance videos highlight the prescience of social media and the mobile phone in youth culture
In Durban, almost everyone dances, it is a part of the city’s cultural identity, exemplary of its status as a hub of house and gqom. Dance is a language Durbanites are fluent in, a tenet of their cultural socialisation. However, the way in which this cultural meme is proliferated is expanding. Double step is a dance that has reached the masses through popularity on social media. Emanating from the youth of the East Coast, the dance style has gone viral online and offers a glimpse into African youth culture and how cellphones along with social media are shifting the nexus of pop culture on the continent. In providing alternate streams of entertainment from radio and televised broadcasting, social media offers millenials an instrument of expression to share their art, opinions and speak truth to power. The cellphone is now a part of the artillery used to gain access and create content, subverting barriers to communication and offering an immediate alternative to the Eurocentric and American programming dominating South African radio and television.
Double Step is an astonishing performance of fluidity and frenetic footwork. The schoolchild featured in the video here is a Double Stepping dream, her moves have been making waves worldwide. A testament to the performance but also to the power of social media as a platform for youth, particularly African youth, so often objectified and marginalised in traditional media.
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Push Push; breaking down white fragility and misogyny in the music industry
Push Push is a polarising figure. But why is the rapper so divisive? The shade and hype around Push-Push are somewhat of her own making, but there is a mystery mixed into the discourse around her. Over two days, and some Facebook interviewing, Push, opens up about loving hip hop when it don’t love you and speaking truth to a male dominated industry.
Here is a rapper with micro-notoriety in the entertainment industry, and competing mythologies of Greek girl gone bad, and the stripper who raps. The internet will confirm these tropes but what the world is yet to discover is an artist determined to see the scales between the sexes balanced, and femininity unfettered by fragile masculinities. Throughout our messaging Push reminds me that the year is 2016; we are in a new millennium and women are still marginalised, a glance at the line-ups of Oppi Koppi to Glastonbury will confirm this. And while whiteness is privileged, womanhood is not. So I probe about whether she has plans for world domination, callously, maybe idealistically forgetting our context, until she writes, ‘Most of history’s biggest problems stem from white people trying to achieve world domination, so let me just stay in my lane here’. A most appropriate (read woke) response to the question.
In 2004 Kanye West made it okay to be middle class, almost college educated and rap, now rappers relay their journey from obscurity to the stage without embellishing on their suburban origins. Push Push FKA Nicci Bruce was raised in Port Elizabeth and moved to Cape Town at 16. She launched her creative career as a blogger and soon realised that her calling was in making music rather than writing about it. Enter Oh! Dark Arrow, a rap group she joined with Disco Israel, Keke Mahlelebe and Matt Hichens. She credits Disco for her musical perspective, ‘ In terms of who put me on in music, it was all Disco Israel; he taught me so much about being comfortable with myself and my PE accent. The greatest rapper I’ve ever known, the first person to get through my white fragility and explain my privilege to me on the real.’
Push insists on written interviews, eschewing the urgency of the Skype or phone call, luckily, she writes well. Offering her internet inspirations while reflecting on the need to bring feminism to the creative industries, ‘It’s time we stopped letting our friends throw parties where women in music aren’t supported. It’s hard to be a Hip-Hop loving woman, when Hip-Hop doesn’t love me back, because I’m a woman’. The rampant misogyny in rap is not news, but it can create dissonance for woke fans of the genre, who consume this product that insists women are bitches, hoes, badbads, baby mommas and side pieces. Hip-Hop can be a reflection of how masculinities are performed in urban culture, making it difficult to reconcile with feminism and gender equality. However, it is also a sound sprung from African America retelling experiences of injustice and incarceration along with sudden fame and fortune. The narratives around the music are conflicting, but it remains important to challenge the heteronormative attitudes and behaviour so pervasive in popular music since it permeates the spaces that people enjoy and reimagine themselves in, both privately and publicly.
The more music offering female perspectives and personas, particularly in Hip-Hop, the better. Push Push is breaking through, telling her story of diamonds and dancing, rapped with potency and her PE accent, so fun, and so fresh.
Listen to her here
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The Rude Boyz bring Gqom to Johannesburg, as they advance the sound in South Africa and beyond
The Rude Boyz are in Johannesburg. The trio of Andile, Masive and Menchess has begun a journey to world domination. The story of Gqom and the Rude Boyz begins in KwaZulu Natal, it is a Durban story, and while it cannot be confined to a single article or artist, it can be traced by the rise and rise of the Rude Boyz.
KwaZulu Natal is the land of rolling hills and hips, and the home of Gqom. Dancing is deeply steeped in the culture there, resulting in the most authentic centre for dance and rave culture in South Africa. Nobody gets down like Durbanites, the clubs in the city are fuelled by ecstasy and house music and it is from this scene that Gqom emerges. A subdued, deep house made to hypnotize and enchant dancers. The Rude Boyz gained recognition in this scene with their first EP; Rude Boyz, The Best. Masive, debunks his hometown celebrity status but Menchess and Andile, being high schoolers when the first EP came out, admit that their profiles have exploded somewhat since then. Their debut was followed by Rude Sounds 2, Durban House Mafia and the critically acclaimed Rude Boyz EP which reworks their most favoured tracks and has been released internationally by Goon Club All Stars.
From growing in the same street in Mount Moriah, north of Durban, to pioneering the proliferation of Gqom, the Rude Boyz are en route to big things in 2016. This tour to Johannesburg sees them in studio with Stilo Magolide, working on what they claim will be a huge hit. I don’t doubt it. Their energy is palpable, and their output is outstanding. Their music is being lauded by tastemakers and clubbers the world over, and it seems this is just the beginning.
Listen to one of their latest tunes below.
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The Tembisa fashion show at the forefront of fashion presentation
Fashion 4 Sho an annual fashion show, now in its third years was held on Sunday the 14th of February in Tembisa, a large township situated in the north-east of Johannesburg. The event has little institutional recognition and no social currency within South African fashion industry circles. But despite being ignored by the mainstream its approach and presentation is actually far closer to the current innovation in international fashion presentation than the more famous South African events.
The event had all the features that currently define an “industry shifting” approach towards fashion presentation. Through the event curation, the organisers and the designers engaged in topical fashion industry conversations such as Gender fluidity and body positive casting, the democratisation of fashion transmission and the reimagining of the traditional runway show model.
Mapungubwe street was blocked off for the event, with two white twin-pole tents running about a hundred metres down the street. Green astroturf was draped over a low platform and flowed onto the runway. A red carpet was laid along the length of the runway and was flanked on either side by black plastic chairs. Where the chairs ended a row of centre-fold tables (also on either side of the runway) continued along the road marking out a second part of the runway intended for designers to exhibit and sell their show pieces directly after the shows when the event transformed into a pop up market.
The British luxury fashion brand Burberry, which is at the vanguard of important shifts in the fashion industry has been experimenting with a similar model in recent years. Burberry makes pieces from its collections available immediately after the runway show, in what they describe as “shop the runway”.
Givenchy is another leading international fashion brand which has been taking similar bold steps, making moves which Women’s Wear Daily suggests “could dramatically change the fashion show system for the long haul”. Givenchy opened their September 11 2015 show to the public, showing an acknowledgement of the change in the way fashion is disseminated, shifting from a hierarchical model where collections are for insiders such as editors and buyers to a democratic model described by Vogue as “open-access entertainment”. For the most part fashion shows in South Africa have existed as a form of entertainment even though concerted efforts have been made by local fashion week organisers for them to reflect the Western commercial system.
Fashion 4 Sho rejected this system outright, exploring further the concept of fashion presentation as performance art. The show started with a sole performer dressed only in a pair of green and and blue color-blocked underpants, sitting still on the platform at the top of the runway with a noose tied around his neck. Then another performer emerged on the opposite end of the runway, reciting a haunting poem as she made her way toward the platform. Behind them, models who had been standing still in a caged trailer began banging on its sides as the recital progressed. Just as the poem reached its climax the models broke through the trailer doors gently spilling onto the platform and then lethargically disappearing down the runway. Where the poet left off the Master of Ceremonies continued with improvisational ad-libs delivered in a raspy rolling voice, adding a futher layer of the fantastic and mysticism to the fashion presentation.
Models of all shapes and sizes were cast to walk the runway, and many of the labels on show presented gender fluid looks such as “Tangz” distressed genderless streetwear pieces, which were modelled by both men and women. At times the idea of gender was subverted altogether with “Yayaz Accessories” a predominantly female targeted jewellery collection shown on men. The New York times describes this as “fashion’s gender blur, the narrowing of the sexual divide” calling it a “seismic shift in fashion, a widening acceptance of a style with no boundaries”.
In the South African fashion industry new practices and ideas are recognized or become legitimate only if they are channeled down from the overseas. It is through a more inclusive system where local fashion media and institutions begin to look at, and start taking the creative production developing outside of established and privileged spaces more seriously, that South Africa can become the place where the agenda is being set.
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