Wine, Dinning and Art – This is Rustenburg

There are some places you go to and a couple of things arrest you – the architecture, culture, weather and the general life of the people.
This is the story of Rustenburg, a city situated in at the foot of the Magaliesberg mountain range in North West Province of South Africa.
It was one of the official host cities of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, being in close proximity to Phokeng, capital of the Royal Bafokeng Nation, where the Royal Bafokeng Stadium is located. The England national football team also used this as their base camp for the tournament.
Tsup Ug alongside an African contingent of reporters from DRC, Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana and Uganda toured the city with a bias of the Rustenburg Wines’ fields owned by the Barlow family, one of South Africa’s oldest wine making families.
Having acquired the farms in 1941, the family boosts of over ten dry wine brands and are still innovating.

According to Simon Barlow, the son of Peter and Pamela Barlow, that acquired Rosenburg in 1941, keeping the fields running for all the years has been a mixture of hardwork and unity – for instance, he grew up with some of his now employees and to them the fields are like family.
He also revealed that the field also attracts at least 1800 tourists annually.
Besides the wine, the architect too is eye popping – maintaining a grass thatch as well as a green collage that Simon notes dates back from the days of the farm’s first owners.
During the wine tasting, Tsup Ug learnt that some wine is woody, while the other is hard, smooth or how some types of wine are a total No No for a meat sticks combo.

Of course these are things that your perennial Blackets & Wine reveler has no idea of; wine is an expression for the makers – it’s taste, tells the type of soil, weather and the altitudes it was grown.
Of course it was great knowing that red grapes produce white wine, - who could have imagined?
The winner though should be the art around the city, its strategically located near the Cape Town Film Studio which will always greet you with those pirate ships visible from yards away across the road, then the art expressions around Stellenbosch are too amazing – in a snap Rosenburg is everything a Ugandan art buff can dream of, good art, wine, film and fine food.

Channel O set to shutdown as BET Africa comes in

Viacom Africa will launch a BET syndicate channel on  DStv next month.
The channel has been designed to elevate the rich variety and positive values of African and African – American culture, thus putting a local touch to the international channel.
Going live April 2, 2015, BET Africa will be exclusive to Multichoice and specifically DStv on channel 129, premium bouquet.
Most of the programming schedule that Tsup Ug has at least seen is not really different from that on the BET channel that’s largely accessed on Channels 135 (DSTV) and 23 on GOtv; from the likes of Being Mary Jane, The Wendy Williams’ Show to Kevin Hart’s spoof reality hit Real Husbands of Hollywood, there are a couple of new shows like Martin Lawrence’s 1st Amendment Stand-Up and the only African show at the moment, a South African reality series, Top Actor.
The viewers of BET Africa will though have a chance of watching many of these shows including live events like award shows, way before they air on the current channel, which will by the effect of April 2 become BET2.
The communication about the new BET comes barely a day after it was revealed that Pan African music TV Channel O would be shutting down to concentrate on the South African market.
So is BET coming with opportunities and a new platform for African content producers? Well we can too just watch the space.
According to the Senior Vice President & Managing Director, Viacom International Media Networks Africa, Alex Okosi, BET will connect viewers with international trends, talent and thought leaders, whilst simultaneously celebrating Africa’s talent and creativity.
“This evolution for the BET brand on the continent significantly broadens our general entertainment offering and provides a dynamic and compelling new destination for viewers.”
BET has in the past year been recognizing African music exploits in the annual BET awards where the likes of Radio and Weasel, Diamond from Tanzania, Kenya’s Camp Mulla as well as Mafikizolo and Donald among others have been nominated.
All of the awards have gone to Nigerians with the exception of one that was won by Ghana’s Sarkodie.
The channel has also come under fire many times for presenting the Best International Act: Africa before an empty auditorium and thus never broadcasting it as part of the live show but with the launch of a sister channel, there's hope that Africa may actually get a chance for even a performance at the show this year.
The move comes as VIACOM Africa celebrates ten years of operations on the continent which started with the launch of MTV Base in 2005. 

Review: A woman's body is a battlefield

Theatre is life; it is that one space where messages are passed on in whichever language/culture and they perfectly communicate.

It was the same case when Alliance Française with the support of the UN, Turkish Airlines and put up the spirited production of ‘A woman’s Body is a Battlefield in the Bosnian War’ at the National Theatre on Saturday and Sunday.

Written by Romanian playwright, MateiVisniec, the production is a work of fiction based on real life events;the events occurred in the Bosnian War (1992 – 1995) in which rape was used as a form of military strategy aimed at demoralizing and humiliating the adversary. The show explores questions of belonging and loss of identity in this context of inter-ethnic war.

To prevent conflict from happening here, one has to consider the universal causes for it, and understand what needs to change.

Originally heavy on both French and Romanian, the story tackles absurdities of humankind in an unapologetic and poetic manner; it a story mostly based on two characters, an American psychologist Kate, portrayed by Esther Tebandeke, Allen Kagusuru and Rehema Nanfuka – the reason for casting three people for a role was because of the big and deep lines in the original script, thus breaking the lines to be shared by three women was the trick.

The other character was the rape victim, Dorra portrayed by the bankable Gladys Onyenbot.

Kate was sent to Bosnia to help a team digging up mass graves, and as a consequence is impaired by a variation of post-traumatic stress disorder. She is cared for in a NATO medical facility where she meets Dorra, a victim of war gang rape. The relationship dynamic takes unexpected turns as the two women deal with the aftermath of war.

At first, the playwright convinces us that Kate is indeed trying to heal Dorra; she notes down progresses in a notebook as well as using those cool scientific terms. It is only later that we realise the two women are institutionalized;Kate because of her own breakdown after looking at so many mass graves and trying to retrieve corpses and Dorra because of her failure to return to normal life after rape.

The only problem is that the production directors Benoit Vitse and BogdanPalie had to cut out almost half of the would-be 105 minutes project, which meant that some of the play detail was erased and the transitions became too quick.

In one scene you had Dorra laughing and then contemplating suicide or abortion in the next.

The production was generally on point; lighting, acting as well as the costumes done by Stella Atal were wonderful.

The show was staged to celebrate women’s rights.

St. Nelly-Sade's Stories of Revelation - worth the wait

I loved performing as a student. I really liked being on that stage to give it to all the haters but mostly, the girls that had rejected me…they were many!!!

Thus it was the same feeling when our class was picked to perform at one of the assemblies in 2006. The biggest rap song at the time was Mother Africa, by the Hip Hop Canvas.

Not to disrespect the other people on the song, but I was specifically fascinated by the guys that did verses in Luganda on that joint, thus, when we hit the stage, I went through all the local verses like I had written them myself.

It was a broke April but one of the girls tipped me with a ka-ten. And that was the first time I was earning from Hip Hop. But never took it upon as a career, in fact, I prefer my role as a genre activist.

Last week, St. Nelly Sade released probably one of the most influential Rap albums; Omulondo n’engero (Stories of Revelations) and yes, dissecting this album is as sophisticated as the craft itself.

With an intro that literally kills many local rap albums with a verse, this album pilots itself on a high.

Then goes on to tell stories, some of which by the way will tickle and make you cry at the same time; Story Zange the artiste talks about his life in music, his lyrically conscience songs that have at times rubbed rappers the wrong way.

What makes Omulondo a great album is St. Nelly Sade’s narrative and ability to improvise – there way many verses where the artiste sounds like he’s blabbing or literally free styling and it’s all okay.

He sounds flawless on Nina Plan and pitiful in pain on others like Suicide Note and Amaziga ga Namuddu, some songs like Tutandise featuring Agie and The Mith are beyond comparison.

All in all St. Nelly Sade’s revelations talk about a hip hop journey as well as paying respect to those that really supported the genre effortlessly like P-Tech, Saba Saba, Babaluku, Barna Mutibwa and Saint C.A among others.

The only thing I guess that Nelly Sade missed out on was a battle song, you know all rap albums usually feature a battle track where they invite friends to just spit and show off – it would have been nice listening to him and friends murder the mic.

The nineteen track album ends with a fantastic outro Zino Story, yes this too sounds like free style, he seems to be telling listeners that thanks for listening and make sure you make other people buy this album – well it is a great way to sign out.

Bayimba Music Training is here

 The Bayimba Music training program is once again upon us. Dubbed The practical Musician, the programme is designed to appeal to both the novice and the practicing musicians with a need to develop their musical skills so as to capitalize on methods of learning, creating, documenting and exploiting music.
This is through the different courses designed to achieve this goal. They will include body percussion, rhythmic reading and writing among others.
Then the basics like, introduction to harmony (chords & basic scales), analytic skills development, music marketing; song-writing, arrangement and orchestration as well as improvisation.
The training will take place from 10thto 21st August 2015 (10 days) at Kampala Music School.
Participants will be selected through an audition process that will be carried out by the training facilitators; Kaz Kasozi (Bayimba Music Director) and Anita Asaasira (Assistant Lecturer at the Department of Performing Arts and film, Makerere University).
The auditions will take place at National Theatre, Kampala in the Green Room on the June 29TH 2015 starting at 9am.  Auditions will focus on the practical musical skills as well as capacity to hear and replicate melodies and rhythms on a given instrument. It is important to note that these auditions will be highly competitive. Participants should come prepared with one or two songs/instruments that they can sing /play best. (Only a segment will be used.)

According to an email from the organising team, If a participant is selected, they will be part of the team of (up to) 30 musicians who will be taken through an intensive music training that is guaranteed to equip them with theoretical, practical and analytical skills that are invaluable to musicians.
Selected participants are expected to attend the full periods of the trainings that pertain to their selections and required to pay a course fee of 100,000 prior to course beginning
Bayimba is now accepting submissions for audition. If you are interested you are required to submit a completed Entry form (answering all questions) together with a profile/short biography (max 800 words) with recent picture that will be used for publicity, before 29TH June 2015 to education@bayimba.org