![]() |
City Guide - Johannesburg - Culture | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Culture Cultural Events: Any thoughts that Johannesburg may suffer from chronic cultural as well as climatic drought can be put to rest by paging through the Tonight supplement to the city's main daily newspaper, The Star (web site: www.iol.co.za). As well as the lively theatre scene, Johannesburg's annual festivals, which cover nearly every artistic field, are an engrossing way to sample different aspects of the city's cultural life. Tickets are available from Computicket (tel: (011) 340 8000; fax: (011) 340 8900; web site: www.computicket.com) or Ticketweb (tel: (086) 140 0500, toll free; web site: www.ticketweb.co.za). There is also a good on-line cultural guide (web site: www.artslink.co.za). Music: The lusty lyrics and irresistible dance beats of Kwaito can be heard blasting out of taxis, clubs, shebeens and street parties throughout Johannesburg. The genre uses local languages and street slang in lyrics that reflect life in South Africa and employs a distinct South African style of dancing and dressing. Places to hear Kwaito in Johannesburg include: La Frontière, Hillbrow; Insomnia, Randburg; Tandoor, Yeoville; 707i; Orlando West, Soweto. Maskande is a Zulu/Country fusion well represented by Philemon Zulu and the Jeremy Franklin Band. Busi Mhlongo and Madala Kunene are also worth seeing. Gigs are not as common as Kwaito and visitors should check local press. Theatre: The Market Theatre Company, Newtown Cultural Precinct (tel: (011) 832 1641; web site: www.markettheatre.co.za) has, since 1976 - the days of protest theatre - gained a reputation for putting on productions that are socially relevant. The Civic Theatre Complex, Loveday Street, Braamfontein (tel: (011) 403 3408; web site: www.artslink.co.za/civic) comprises the Civic Main, Tesson, Thabong and Pieter Roos theatres and an art gallery. Shows are mainly musicals, spectaculars, comedy and pantomime (in season). Dance: Dance Factory (tel: (011) 833 1347; fax: (011) 833 1263; e-mail: dancefactory@icon.co.za), President Street, Newtown Cultural Precinct hosts a huge range of international and local performers, often mixing classical and ethnic styles. Film: Ster-Kinekor (web site: www.sterkinekor.com) cinemas are located at dozens of venues throughout Johannesburg and screen mainstream movies. Cinema Nouveau at The Mall shopping centre in Rosebank has a reputation for showing arthouse films. The year 2000 brought the first ever Soweto Film Festival, which could well become an annual event (web site: www.news24.com). Some notable films set in Johannesburg include: Mapantsula (1988), which tells of a petty hoodlum caught up in the events of the student riots in Soweto; The Foreigner (1994), which deals with the growing xenophobia aimed mostly at immigrant Africans in Johannesburg; The Line (1996), which portrays ordinary South Africans caught up in the violent times of a fast changing society. Cultural events: Arts Alive (tel: (011) 838 6407; web site: www.artsalive.org) festival occurs annually during September, mainly at venues in Newtown but also in Soweto and Tembisa. Apart from general music concerts and stage productions, such as the popular Jazz on the Lake (at the Zoo lake), community festivals from Soweto and Alexandra are also included. There are various sub-festivals that occur at the same time, such as Joy for Jazz and Dance @ Arts Alive. This is regarded as among South Africa's top dance festivals, with a huge programme. Johannesburg Biennale, a somewhat controversial exhibition (due to a lack of commercial viability) of cutting-edge visual arts, is one of the most Afrocentric local events. The next festival is due for 2001, although its future is uncertain. FNB Vita run many festivals, including Dance Umbrella, the major national platform for South African choreography, every February and March, at the Wits Theatre, Jorrisson Street, Braamfontein; the Windybrow Theatre Festival, every March at the Windybrow Centre for the Arts, 161 Nugget Street, Hillbrow; and the Market Theatre Laboratory Community Theatre Festival, Market Theatre Laboratory, where plays, music and dance are showcased by community theatre troupes in May. Amfest 2000 (web site: http://www.artslink.co.za) is the largest and most prestigious one-act amateur drama festival in South Africa. It takes place in July/August each year at venues around Johannesburg. WOMAD (World of Music and Dance; web site: www.womad.org/southafrica) takes place over a weekend annually during April at Bluegum Creek in Benoni near Johannesburg, and includes workshops, weekend camping and a late-night dance event. Literary Notes Johannesburg's tumultuous past (and present) has provided fertile grounds for the growth of a rich literary tradition. An excellent source of books is the African Books Collective (web site: www.africanbookscollective.com). Nadine Gordimer, who won the 1991 Nobel Prize for Literature, was born close to the city in 1923 and has lived in Parktown, Johannesburg since 1948. In The House Gun (1998), set in Johannesburg, she explores through a murder trial the problems of a violence-ridden post-Apartheid society. In his writings about Johannesburg, Herman Charles Bosman (1910-1951) presents the soul of the city as reflecting the soul of Africa. To understand the background to why Johannesburg has fascinated so many writers, the following two books are a good initial read: Gandhi's Johannesburg: Birthplace of Satyagraha by Eric Itzkin (Witwatersrand University Press, 2000) and A City Divided: Johannesburg and Soweto, by Nigel Mandy (Macmillan, Johannesburg, 1984). Although Nelson Mandela was not born in Johannesburg, he did have a law practice here in the 1950s and was arrested in the suburb of Rivonia before being tried and convicted for treason in 1963. Mandela's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom (1995) provides a remarkable insight into what Johannesburg in the 1940s and 50s was like for this extraordinary man.Zakes Mda's new novel about Sophiatown, Heart of Redness, explores that area during 'The golden '50s. The flowering of South African culture. The Sophiatown renaissance. It was all happening in our midst. But somehow we did not see it at the time'. One of Johannesburg's most famous theatrical sons is Pieter-Dirk Uys, possibly better known as Evita Bezuidenhout. Pieter-Dirk Uys started irritating South African politicians and censors with his plays from 1973 onwards. His better known or more notorious works include Adapt or Dye (1981), which parodied the white regime's preoccupation with skin colour and, more recently, Truth Omissions (1996/1997), a somewhat ascorbic comment on South Africa's Truth Commission, a post-Apartheid platform to facilitate reconciliation and reparation. |
|