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Welcome to 1984, ou boet. Have you heard of the POI? And we’re not talking about those flaming tennis balls hippies like to swing around at trance parties. The Protection of Information Bill, or POI, may sound like an innocuous Thai food ingredient but it’s actually pretty damn sinister. This proposed new legislation by government has been getting media practitioners’ backs up for a while now yet the general public seem to be largely apathetic to government’s attempts to

Carlo Mombelli is a bit of the-odd-one-out in the context of the South African music scene. I can imagine three quarters of my friends going “sorry, who?” if I mention his name, the other quarter will extol his virtues far and wide. The portly man with the distinctive bass tone, equal parts gloop and grunt, will never really run the risk of being considered trendy, so his music remains for those who still have the capacity for childlike awe.

Emigration. I used to laugh at chicken hearted people packing their bags every time the Rand lost ground against the Dollar and the murder rate spiked. I urged lost sheep to return from their populous commune in London to enjoy the wide open spaces of SA. My patriotism lived on my sleeve – an eternal optimist. Then my family and I went abroad. People asked, “Are you going for good?” I was defensive. “There are no opportunities in Europe.

Cool – going to a show for music that you enjoy to stand around and look disinterested. It’s no longer about being there – it’s about being the coolest person at the blow out. Covering yourself in mystery and intrigue. Are we turning Japanese? Apparently people there don’t dance. They just stand around and wait for the gig to finish and applaud politely afterwards. We have so many different kinds of dances here in Mzansi, I’m surprised that we

Compilations suck, they tend to lack direction, are poorly put together and don’t showcase more than one or two good artists. The Red Bull Studio Sessions forms a pleasant almost-exception. If you don’t already know, the Red Bull Studio, in Cape Town, is a state of the art recording and mixing facility where they invite upcoming South African musos to record, collaborate and mix their stuff. For free! It’s a worthy service for broke but talented local musicians who

Tim is the hooded one who turns the beatbox on in the video below. That’s all we know. But how about that Eve Rakow? She’s the (un)real thing. A pop entity. Self-made. A willed synthesis of girl signifiers purloined from the hip femme canon – there’s Bjork, there’s Gaga, there’s a baby doll Bond girl, there’s anime princesses and Eastern European fatales. Rakow arrived in the goofy electro pop duo Love On Rollerskates, then graduated to “post-gypsy woodland war

KIF. Not only can Big Mocka cut your hair and give you the silky smooth styles of Ice Cube and, uh, Whitney Houston, or is that Khanyi Mbau? But he’s also talented and nonchalant enough to send text messages while he’s doing it.

South Africa is blessed with the kind of surfing talent that on any given day and at any given contest we can just throw some random local surfers into the line up and have them beating the world’s best. Who also happens to be a South African. What can we say? Our cup runneth over. At the Oneill Cold Water classic in Cape Town last week, a retired family man, Greg Emslie, and a Kom-skom manchild, Matt Bromely, took

“Pop” has become somewhat of a dirty word amongst many who consider themselves fans of “alternative” music. However, I’m of the belief that a good pop song is still a good song nonetheless and Dance You’re On Fire have proved that. They’ve been around for a while now, having released an EP already as far back as 2008. After a lineup change, they’ve dropped a lot of their more progressive-leanings, exhibited on their debut release, for their current pop-styled

Sometimes you want to drop the critical apparatus. Drop it hard. So it cracks and all the unsaid things spill out. Objectivity is such a bitch. It’s Nurse Ratchett in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. A forbidding, tight-lipped, essentially perverse rule-setting party-pooper. It’s also entirely necessary – otherwise the lunatics take over the asylum, and nothing gets done. So there’s the tension. It’s a tussle defining the evolution of consciousness. Rules, rationality and freedom. This over-reaching language (in

On a Monday afternoon, this July, we said goodbye to a comic book writer. Fittingly Harvey Pekar was found by his beloved wife, Joyce Brabner, in their modest home in Cleveland Ohio. Joyce was his third wife. Pekar was diagnosed with cancer in 1990. Though he had serious health problems the ultimate cause of his death is not clear. Long term readers of his melancholy output will put it down to chronic existential loneliness. His masterpiece, Our Cancer Year,

Yes yes cheapskates, bums, hobos and the unemployed we have got our filthy little mits on the hottest tickets in town. Or should that be the bushveld? Either way, we’re handing out free double-tickets to this year’s Oppikoppi. The line up is ridiculous. Easily the biggest, most important contemporary South African music showcase of the year. All you need to do to scoop our free tickets is write us a little limerick (yes a limerick) a witty little ode

On summery Monday morning in London a pair of buskers set up outside Camden Station. An amp on a trolly, a car battery and a dirty yellow saxophone. It’s a common occurrence in the London scene, but I’ve still got the fresh eyes so I’m drawn in like a junky to the good stuff. The raggedy pair of hip hoppers begin with a tentative beat box and a few colourful Camden drifters gather round. I quickly realise that this

Question: What do 95% of South African music journalists do? Answer: They assume the position, open all holes and suck that sweet band cock. The sounds of deep-throating then echo on pages and screens, echo so loud and so unanimous that they drown out the actual music. Back in the 60s and 70s music journalists were the enemy who asked the vital, now-forgotten questions: “What is this all for? Why should we listen to you? What sets you apart

Mahala needs that old surfboard, the one sitting in your garage gathering dust… We collect and distribute second hand surf gear to grass roots surfing initiatives around the country. We exist to empower disadvantaged communities through surfing. You could lend a hand. Email us here.

Last Sunday, Maputo, 16h34… All images © Sydelle Willow Smith.

At first I was curious as to why Jesus had chosen the Blues Room as his ideal place of return. Then I realized that even Jesus didn’t have that much beard and He probably didn’t sound like he’d eaten gravel and a pack of Marlboros for breakfast. The Jesus wannabe whipped, from the folds of a pair of torn, baggy and dirty jeans, a harmonica… and everything else in the room became a blur. I’m a sucker for a

We’re into the last stretch of DIFF. Tonight is the closing film and gala dinner for presenting awards. There is still a full day of films tomorrow though. Grateful my eyes haven’t exploded. At this point everyone is abuzz with comparisons, between films, between this year’s fest and previous years, with their favourites list, trying to decide which films they should still try and squeeze in before midnight on Sunday. Overall things are sounding positive for 2010’s experience. I’ve

Johannesburg, 1985. In a helicopter flying back from Bophuthatswana, music producer Hilton Rosenthal saw Ellis Park below. He leaned over and told his companion, 702 boss Issy Kirsch, that he had been listening the previous Saturday to a 702 telethon raising money for a local charity and wanted to do something similar – only much bigger. The stadium below, he believed, would be an ideal venue. As luck would have it, Kirsch was a friend of Ellis Park supremo

KIF. Mak 1 has been beautifying Cape Town spaces for a long time now, in between doing stints as an MC and stand-up comedian. But this latest piece, on the edge of District Six, encapsulating the zeitgeist of the decades of South Africa’s recent history, and remarkable turnaround, is a timely reminder of exactly how far we’ve come. KAK, that he didn’t throw in the decade of 2000-2010 with the arms deal, Aids denialism, nepotism, corruption and the ever