Get in touch with your medieval roots this weekend at the Collingwood Children’s Farm Winter Solstice.
Eduardo Galeano, in the first chapter of his masterpiece: “Open Veins of Latin America” describes the mines of Potosí. The history of this Bolivian town is the paradigm of European colonial exploitation. In Potosi the natives were forced to work as slaves to extract huge amounts of minerals that were then exported to Spain. The city was founded at the foot of Cerro Rico, a mountain full of mineral veins, particularly silver, so that the tip was said to shine under the rays of the sun. By 1625, Potosi had become one of the most heavily populated cities in the world. In its first 28 years of existence, the number of inhabitants had reached that of London and had even surpassed Rome, Madrid and Paris.
Four days ago, the only sound you could hear throughout South Africa was the sound of the Vuvuzela. As the countdown reached 0 and Fifa World Cup kick off was screened world-wide… it was a moment of pride and chaos. And it seems that June will be remembered as milestone month for those also off the field, where the piercing sounds of Vuvuzelas are instead the heart, soul and mind bending beats of filthy drum n bass. June 3 2010 was the night that Cape Town celebrated four years of drum n bass pandemonium – it was the fourth birthday of It Came From The Jungle – an weekly party driven by the prolific DJ Niskerone – Mark Stevens – who started these now legendary nights back in 2006 at Fiction night club on Long Street.
Five months ago, the idea of the Tote ever reopening its doors seemed as likely as Bon Scott singing on the next ACKA record. However, through some miraculous turn of events, the iconic venue is set to defy the odds and dust off the taps this month for a grand reopening.
Prior to its untimely closure in January, the venue had been up against every brick wall imaginable.
Brain Children are a fascinating musical proposition.
Brain Children is the brain child of Michael Mate and Maxwell Crumb, two Melbourne music veterans who’ve completely ruined their lives by relentlessly peddling their musical wares across the globe.
Indeed, these young men have spent the majority of their youths and adulthoods on tour, cutting their teeth on bad roads, sticky floors and ramshackle stages. These years of extended poverty have created a degree of musical knowhow and a lack of pretense that certainly sets them apart from their bovine contemporaries.
The Last Tuesday Society are an arts collective who are “devoted to exploring and furthering the esoteric, literary and artistic aspects of life in London and beyond.”
The society was first established by William James at Harvard University in 1878 and is now run by the Chancellor Viktor Wynd, who’s been running events in the capital since 2006. Regular events include ‘The Salon’ in which one of the committee members gives a talk accompanied by a nine course dinner or tea on a lawn, a quarterly séance and ‘Loss’ – a night consisting of Victorian taxidermy, headless pigs and piles of rotting fruit as a tribute to Gunter Grass’s fictional nightclub ‘The Onion Cellar’ in which people wept over chopped onions whilst sad plays and songs were performed.
