mo jazz please

One month of adventures and all-nighters, new friends and new cameras, flapjacks and flat tires. It will all come in due time. First things first, my jazz affair.

Over 70,000 people (or so they say) attend the Cape Town International Festival each year. The Convention Center hosts a two-night festival with six stages and over 40 artists, from Cape Town, from Africa, Sweden, India..everywhere. I bought my ticket well in advance which was lucky because both nights sold out. People pulled up in limos and hired cars, wealthy Africans dressed to the nines, flashing jewellery worth more than my savings account. I went with my friend Jade, a UCT saxophone star herself, and we spent the nights chasing down band after band. Sunday night I was dreaming in jazz, I kid you not.

Highlights from the festival:
1. The Bad Plus – from my darling Minneapolis, they were everyone’s highlight and one of my favorite groups ever. My friends are still talking about it, thanking me for forcing them to go. If you haven’t heard their covers (think Rush, Radiohead, Aphex Twin, Nirvana) please listen to them now. www.thebadplus.com
2. Regina Carter- she’s an American violinist who played with a man on the Kora, an African string instrument, and a jazz accordion. We were floating
3. Charles Lloyd- saxophone. Legendary
4. Marcus Wyatt and the Language 12 – former UCT student on the trumpet. He played with Language 12, including a fabulous vocalist who sang in Xhosa. We were still floating
5. Kesivan & The Lights: Instigators of a Revolution – These guys are young, spunky, Cape Town jazz. They played with Feya Faku (legend!) and guests from Europe. So good I went and saw them again on my birthday the next week
6. Melanie Scholtz- South African vocalist. Sultry and delicious. Mmm
7. Makeson Brown and Akoustik Knot: more young feisty Capetonians, they play at a bar near my house sometimes. It's amazingly good.

Ok I could go on and on. Anyway the jazz here is wonderful. South African musicians have struggled for a long time with bans and stigmatism because of political issues and anti-apartheid protests. Now that South Africa is big in the world again, it’s a great opportunity for music to mix. It’s really interesting because there’s all different styles: Cape Jazz, South African jazz, African jazz, modern jazz… the awesome thing about this festival was seeing everything and everyone combining and celebrating and blowing my socks off. Jade is also a great musician and one morning hosted a giant pancake breakfast for her musician friends and her nonmusician friends to chow some delicious food and talk music. It was fun jumping into their world for a day and eating whipped cream and chocolate for lunch is never a bad idea.

I only have a little over a month left in SA and I’ve still got so much of South Africa to explore. And things are getting so hectic with preparations for the World Cup. Construction projects are frantically being built, cities are panicking, trying to clean up the streets. Cape Town is working on a mega transportation system to get fans to and from the games. It’s chaotic. I’m not sure how it will all pan out but it will be interesting to watch. I keep having mixed feelings about the whole thing. It’s great that South Africa is finally on the map, entering the global arena, so to speak. But honestly I’m not sure they’re ready. Here’s an interesting article that should get you thinking:

http://www.abahlali.org/node/6566

And I didn’t even get to AfrikaBurn. Expect fun things next post! xoxomo

Overdue notice, please bill the fines to my parents, thanks

I’m excited to be writing this blog post! Everything has been happening all at once in classic student fashion. On days when I’m not out of the house exploring I’m trying, rather unsuccessfully, to write papers and do homework. I have a huge assignment due Wednesday but I’m a firm believer in mental health days, study dance breaks, and dark chocolate. To fill you in…

Fall break here was a whirlwind adventure. I spent the first half at a camp with my ecology class in the West Coast National Park. The area is chock full of ostriches. I’d never seen an ostrich out in the wild—it’s not something you really think about seeing—but they were so fun to see because they poke up over the bushes, very awkwardly, like they’re trying to hide but want to see if you’re coming. The camp was one of my favorite experiences in SA—I met so many fun people and got to unashamedly be the science nerd I really am inside. 60 of us students spent five nights bunking in converted stables in the park, about 2 hours north of Cape Town on the Atlantic Ocean. We’d wake up super early in the mornings and go out in small groups with professors to spend the day in the field doing research. In the afternoon we’d send someone to town for beer, and then at night we’d chow on fresh fish, make bonfires, play ultimate frisbee, bait the resident porcupine with peanut butter and cabbage, tell stories, drink boxed wine, spot shooting stars. Then we’d wake up and do it all over again. The projects were neat because the data we collected will actually be published some time. I spent a day collecting mussels and anemones from tide pools, a day tramping around in the bush identifying plants, a day counting snails on the beach, and a day on a boat in the lagoon catching sharks. We’d pull these guys on board, measure them, take genetics samples, tag them, give them antibiotics to stain their growth rings and send them back. I ended up bringing three sharks in and doing the work all myself! Talk about hands-on learning..

I arrived home at 1 pm from camp that Wednesday, showered, ate, repacked and woke up again the next morning at 4 am for my flight to Johannesburg and my tour to Kruger. I went by myself which was actually quite nice. There was another American UCT student there with her family so they bought me lunch and let me hang out with them so I wasn’t super lonely. Kruger was phenomenal. I did have a pretty generous zoom on the camera I borrowed, but still. To be in a park the size of Israel without fences in between you, the animals, the other animals—just things surviving as they have for thousands of years. From an ecological standpoint it’s so incredible. At one point we came upon a fresh lion kill. The lions weren’t there, but the vultures were digging in, so excited to finish it off. Someone kept referencing everything back to Lion King, which was strangely applicable. The whole circle of life motif…

Things have kept happening since then—jazz, birthdays, political events, jazz..but it will have to wait. So will my paper it looks like… Hey, well, you know what they say…hakuna matata :)

Trekking through the lagoon and netting sand sharks, sole and all sorts of cool critters

Byron and his baby.

Our botany professor chain-smoked while we discussed the Western Cape's fyn bos biome and how it's dependent on fire for reproduction. hmm. this plant eshibits root-suckering if anyone's curious..

a walk in the (kruger national) park

newborn hippo and her big mama

my tent! the walls unzipped so they were only mesh. i had many visitors. sometimes they were frogs. sometimes spiders. sometimes they ran across my legs. you know, just to say hello.

epic. we parked next to this water hole and watched a hippo and a crocodile hang out. some giraffes started fighting. birds flew around. then, all of a sudden, all of these buffalo arrived to join the party. it was incredible. ask to see some videos when i see you next.

thanks josh for lending me your camera!