NAF: The hub of creative talent in SA

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One of the singular characteristics of the National Arts Festival in Makhanda, which ended last weekend, is its ability to concentrate a large portion of South Africa’s creative talent in the small town every year.

It creates an easygoing but thought-provoking space for cross-disciplinary conversations between artists about individual work and potential future collaborations, critiques and comparisons of what is on the programme, an opportunity to (re)connect with fellow artists and audiences and, perhaps most importantly — during a time of increasing precarity in the arts space and in the country’s politics — a reminder that, as Kesivan Naidoo observed during his Big Band’s great set on Saturday, “We are all in this together.”

The Long Table, a temporary pop-up for every festival, maintained its reputation as a democratic space with its egalitarian long trestle tables ensuring punters rubbed elbows with, and slopped soup on, the artists they had just seen perform.

There is dance choreographer Mamela Nyamza having a giggle with comedian Rob van Vuuren outside Naidoo’s big-band set on the final Saturday night. 

Earlier that afternoon, outside the St Andrew’s Hall after a performance of Swart Water, a powerful Afrikaans piece which explores the various challenges — from the threat of mining to an erasure of history and culture — which the inhabitants of Namaqualand face, I bumped into photographer Rafs Mayet in earnest conversation with Swiss trombonist Andreas Tschopp at they strolled up from the Village Green towards the DSG Hall where the Jazz Festival is hosted every year.

Mayet possesses, arguably, the most encyclopaedic jazz music brain in the country and is one of South Africa’s greatest music photographers. He remains one of SA journalism’s nicest humans. Soon, guitarist Reza Khota, one of the nicest musicians in SA, ambled up to join us before the set-up for the big band performance.

The Village Green had filled up with the weekend punters — up for a day out — and the conversation shifts from music to the festival itself. It’s been much smaller and more contained than usual. Even the Hare Krishnas appear to have cut their losses from previous festivals and no longer host their food stand in the

Village Green — a development mourned by both Khota and Mayet. There were fewer shows but the jazz festival managed to continue programming, despite two years of sponsorship uncertainty.

The jazz festival would have been much more anaemic were it not for the arrangements (and Swiss funding) which allowed Naidoo to bring his big band, a mixture of overseas and local musicians, who featured in different permutations (trios, sextets, etc, with Naidoo a mainstay in many of them) to fill up the programme.

What did emerge from this mix of funding duct tape, perseverance and dedication by the likes of Naidoo and jazz festival director Alan Webster, and generosity of musicians, is a programme that nurtured tomorrow’s talent through the Schools Programme.

And there were stellar musical experiences: Standard Bank Young Artist for Jazz, Linda Sikhakhane took the audience on a transcendental journey through Nguni mysticism during his Iladi: A Thanksgiving Meditation in Two Movements. Swiss duo Marc Stucki (saxophone) and Tschopp (trombone) combined with SA bassist Shane Cooper for an aural provocation where all the musicality of all three instruments was explored in experimental new ways through The Magic Number and Mombelli’s Chamber (Carlo Mombelli on bass, Sisonke Xonti on sax, Kyle Shepherd on piano, Susan Mouton on cello and Naidoo on drums) provided exquisite dreamscapes.

‘N boer maak ‘n plan, as they say around here.