where are we going?

Still stumbling my way through the whole Blogging experience, but learning something new is always fun. Don't worry, sooner or later, i will get the hang of it and then its on. Until then, please bare (yes, that was intentional - lay your spirit bare) and bear with me. This is actually such as self-serving experience - a space to say whatever you want, when you want. makes me feel relevant, although 'speaking' does necessarily imply that someone is 'listening'.

Anyway, for those of you in the Johannesburg region, come through to the San Heritage Festival starting tonight and running through to Sunday. Don't know what I have done with the details so contact Berno on 073 883 5328 for information. I will be MCing a portion of the programme as well as performing tomorrow afternoon.

Also, there is a musical experience going down on Sunday evening at Gallery 181 in Kya-Sands starting at around 4pm. The Soulbird World Music Concert is a Sunday afternoon "bring a picnic" concert featuring El Hadj Djiop, master Senegalese percussionist and drummer, Courtney Ward-Hofinger, Makati Molekwa and Christopher Tokalon. They are an awesome band and the Gallery is an amazing experience with beautiful sculptures dotting the whole space. Tickets are R50 and you can call (011) 708 2116.

Gallery 181 is becoming the new spot for events, etc and I will be having some poetry events there, starting end of October. It is time we broke out from beyond the traditional poetry spaces in this city. While Newtown serves as a cultural precinct, the Word needs to infiltrate all aspects of society and, to do this, we need to break out of the box. The love of Word is not limited to students and rastas and those who exist on the fringes of our world. The mountain needs to start travelling to Mohammed and poetry being perceived as an 'underground' art form needs to end. To me, being underground means struggling to survive and having a limited audience, which doesn't make sense. I assume that once we start to pursue our art form as a career, the intention is to share it with as many people as possible .... all underground gives you is the same faces and the same people every day, every show. Soon we will be talking about 'keeping it real' in poetry and I think it was Busta Rhymes who said 'keeping it real sounds more like keeping it hungry'.

I am ranting, aren't I? Having one of those days when I struggle to remember why I continue to pursue the Word. Would be easier to have it as a hobby and fully join the rat race, defining my routine for the rest of my breathing years:

mechanical zombies clutter pavements, and office blocks, blindly following the worn path, the fork in the road a figment of a dreamer's imagination, and dreams are for the insignificant, who chase a reality that can never exist, is this all there is, wake up, get dressed, have breakfast, go to work, tea break, lunch break, go home, watch telly, go to sleep, the cycle begins again, and again, and again, and again........?

Okay, want to leave this alone for now ....

The new wonder boy of hip hop seems to be Khanye West, a suburban middle-class raised man breaking into the Bling-Bling, Gangsta world of Rap. Just received a copy of an article from The Guardian about him and recently read an article in Time magazine. The common thread is how Khanye is bringing an element of social consciousness into the hip hop realm. He hasn't been a hustler, a drug dealer, a gangsta and, therefore, reflects this in his work.... he also recently openly criticised George Bush for the US Government's slow reaction to the Katrina disaster.

This has got me thinking about the state of poetry in Joburg. It does seem to be a bit of the opposite. If your poetry is not about political consciousness, 'chanting down babylon', fighting the system, there seems to be a perception that you aren't being true to the African cause. In everything we do, there seems to always be a desire to push a particular state at the expense of others. Whatever happened to human beings as multi-layered creatures with the desire to explore all elements of this thing called life?