Pan African Space Station posters
It has been my honour recently to be commisioned by Ntone Edjabe, editor of the Chimurenga literary magazine, to design five posters for a series of gigs that ran as part of the Pan African Space Station “30-day music intervention” he set up with Neo Muyanga.
Among the shows I got to see was a beautifully intimate solo show by Madala Kunene (he played in The Slave Church in Long Str, in complete darkness),a welcome Cape Town performance by the ever-brilliant Blk Jks at The Assembly, and a totally jaw-dropping show by Carlo Mombelli & The Prisoners of Strange at the Mowbray Town Hall.
I’ve seen Carlo Mombelli play solo before, at the first On The Edge of Wrong festival, but nothing could prepare me for the absolute brilliance of the full band’s set. The band, which consists of Marcus Wyatt (trumpet), Siyavuya Makuzeni (voice and trombone) and Lloyd Martin (drums), went from introspective soundscapes into full blown ecstatic free-jazz blowouts which had the crowd rocking in their seats and laughing with sheer joy, and for the first time i saw how such challenging music can also be so much fun to experience live.
Carlo Mombelli & The Prisoners of Strange @ Mowbray Town Hall, 4 Oct 2008
At one point Carlo distributes a collection of cheap toys to his band, and they launch into ‘Animation’, a complex and ridiculously enjoyable call-and-response loop consisting of whistles, squeaks and wails from the toys.
The Prisoners of Strange played for at least two hours straight, but there was so much to absorb and so much sheer mirth coming from the music that i never once felt bored; only, at one point, a bit worried that my head might explode.
Cape Town certainly gets a raw deal by seeing this incredible band so rarely, but there’s talk of Carlo returning for next year’s ‘Edge of Wrong’, with his band in tow…
On the whole, the Pan African Space Station gigs were brilliantly curated, with an interesting agenda of contextualising artists from other African countries within the rest of the world, such as New York-based drummer Cindy Blackman’s quartet and Paris-based Bibi Tanga’s Professeur Inlassable, but I get a sense of gleeful vindication from the fact that the most mindblowing shows came from three criminally underrated South African acts.
