I spent yet another week as an intern at the SAEP office. The good thing was that I stayed busy for most of the week. The bad part was that my marimba work still has not gotten off the ground. I tagged along to a marimba performance by amaAmbush last Sunday, and took some good photos and audio recordings. It was actually a pretty fun event, despite the awkward venue!
The band was playing at the Roosevelt club in downtown CT, which was a sort of bar/restaurant that was attempting to start a tradition of Sunday afternoon braais (barbecues). However, the city basically shuts down on Sundays--no shops are open, no restaurants except the really fancy ones do any business because nobody is walking around in town on a Sunday. This particular club decided that they would attempt to capitalize on this fact by finding a niche as the Sunday afternoon hang-out. And as a draw? Live music and questionable food.
Initially, they set us up in a small outdoor tented area just outside their main bar area. This was incredibly tight, with the players on one side practically dipping their elbows in the buffet dishes and the players on the other side creating a danger zone in the couch seating.
The performers at the middle-left are Ross and his little sister. Ross is the director of amaAmbush (the whole organization, not just the band). On the far left and second-to-right are two township high school students (one is in Grade 12, the other I'm not sure, but may have already graduated high school) and the guy on the far right is a marimba-admirer-turned-player from one of the townships. These performing groups are made up of "whoever's free" from amaAmbush--they don't have to rehearse or anything! Pretty impressive if you ask me, and I enjoyed meeting and talking with these guys.
So once the space crunch was recognized we were quickly moved out to the sidewalk outside the club (see below). The irony here is that the club actually hired a music group that it could not fit into its building, for a non-existent audience.
Aside from the odd setup, the second irony was that the club asked for the band to be there around 3:00 pm and the band was to play 2 half-hour sets. However, since very few customers had made it to the club by then, the manager asked the band to just sit around until they had an audience. Turns out they had to sit around for over an hour! And then only one set was played, and the club continued to blast its pop music inside the bar throughout the performance. Quite odd, all around.
The music they played was really interesting, though! Many of the songs are traditional Xhosa melodies that have been adapted to marimbas, while others are popular tunes like "Take Five" and "In the Jungle" that even Americans would recognize. Because the band was only made up of three marimba players, each part is much more "full" than the parts we generally play in the States. Instead, the two instruments have to compensate by playing parts with many more notes. The tenor almost always plays some sort of quick-rhythmed chord part, often made up exclusively of drag triplets (in the style of Babamudiki for those of you who know it). The soprano gets to play whatever strikes his/her fancy, but it is almost never a rolling part and almost always has split-handed character to it (right hand high, left hand stays low, complex melodies result!). There aren't as many interesting rhythmic patterns that come out in the soprano and tenor instruments, but the resulting music is incredibly powerful because of the quick chordal nature and considerable volume of the soprano and tenor. The bass parts though--they are way cooler than ours! I apologize for inventing my own marimba terms to describe the music, but I don't have a way to post a recording just yet. All the recordings I took this weekend are high-quality sound files so they are too big to upload. I'll try to make some simpler recordings soon for public consumption!
I haven't had any marimba since last weekend though, and I am unhappy about that. I'm learning that in Cape Town you just have to be assertive or you won't get anything done. So today I am supposed to start being assertive :).
If you want to see more photos of the gig, there is an album posted at my Grinnell Gallery account. You can it them at http://www.grinnellgallery.com/viewAlbum.do?aid=4c8d8b5a130b973501146f5bd54876a4 . I have to warn you that all the photos are fairly similar, though!
1 comment:
Hey there Sarah, I really enjoy your style of writing.
This gig was an interesting one since the venue had clearly not organized themselves very well.
We find in these situations it is important to play introspectively, and focus on each other and the music, rather than on the performance to an audience. This does change the vibe of the gig though.
With the players, Onke (on the djembe drum) is still in school. He is in grade 12.
Post a Comment