Leave the City

Hey all,

Today I am finally getting out of Johannesburg on a much-needed mini vacation. I've worked the last two weeks straight and haven't had two consecutive days off since June, so I'm pretty excited to get away for a while. Work has also been particularly stressful this last little while. I may have more to write about on that front in the future, but for now I'll have to stay mum, unless you e-mail me.

So I'll be spending the next five days in the KwaZulu-Natal province in the east of South Africa.

Erin and I are going by the Baz Bus, in the direction of Durban. We're spending two nights in North Drakensberg, along Lesotho's eastern border, and then two nights in Durban. During our time in North Drakensberg, we'll actually be staying inside the Royal Natal National Park, which is a world heritage site.

And then we move on to Durbs, but we won't be spending too much time actually in the city, because on our only full day, we're heading about three hours north to Hluhlwe-Imfolozi National Park, where we're hoping to see some wild animals and stuff. We're doing the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi in a day tour through these folks.

I'm just relieved to be getting out of town and away from work for a few days. Jozi's gritty charm has been growing on me, but the city can really tighten your nerves as it sharpens them, and I'm excited to get a chance to do some traveling and actually see some more of this country.

I'll be back on Tuesday and I'll be sure to post photos then.

BK

Nothing to celebrate on Women's Day in SA

This is what I was talking about when I said there was bad news on the SA health department front last week.

But this sums things up best.

And here's an impassioned rebuke from the Treatment Action Campaign.

In short, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge was the deputy health minister in the ANC. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is the health minister. The two didn't get along. Not long ago, Tshabalala-Msimang was, along with President Thabo Mbeki, an ardent AIDS denialist, espousing the use of garlic, olive oil and beetroot as legitimate cures for HIV/AIDS and denouncing ARVs. Fortunately for South Africans, she was hospitalized due to illness a few years ago, and in that time Madlala-Routledge stepped in and completely revamped SA's HIV/AIDS treatment program. Madlala-Routledge is a major reason why prevalence rates are slowly declining among young people in SA, and why thousands more South Africans are on ARV treatment.

And she was fired by Mbeki on Women's Day, ostensibly over an unapproved trip to Spain for an HIV-vaccination conference at which she was a keynote speaker. But the whole thing is a bit screwy.

She also recently called the situation in some of SA's hospitals a "national emergency," because newborn babies were dying due to staff and equipment shortages. Her "over-hyped" language upset Mbeki and Tshabalala-Msimang. This, along with a long history of rabble-rousing and pot-stirring, seem to be the real reason for her firing.

All in all, a pretty shitty Women's Day in SA.

But now there's weird stuff coming out about Tshabalala-Msimang getting hospital staff to fetch her booze and food while she was in hospital two years ago. I don't know where this fits into the mess, except to remark on the karma.

If you're interested, check out the Mail and Guardian's site for tons of stories.

Maru

I saw a bad play a few weeks ago and wrote a review for that Plays on the Net site. If you click on the magazine cover or "Read Latest Issue" tab on the left, you can get to the 'zine. But I can't read it because the fancy program is too much for my USB-modem's "data bundle."

I wrote the review when I had a bad head cold, so it may be worse than the play.

The play was an adaptation of a Bessie Head novel of the same name. I think Bessie Head is brilliant, but the play was exhaustingly bad.

This is why I've always thought of myself as a bad critic: When I see or hear something I don't like, I don't seem to have the same ability or enthusiasm to articulate why I don't like it. I usually feel comfortable explaining why I love something, but I'm no Meghan Harrison or Anna Mehler Paperny, who seem so gifted with the cutting, acerbic wit.

Anyway, friends ...

Wolfe Island Music Fest

Good luck Virginia!

I'm late with this, I know

I know it probably annoys people when I talk about non-South African issues on this thing, but since I couldn’t be on the jury this year, I wanted to weigh in on the Polaris Prize shortlist that was announced a few weeks ago.

If you missed it, here are this year’s nominees:

Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
The Besnard Lakes – The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse
The Dears – Gang of Losers
Julie Doiron – Woke Myself Up
Feist – The Reminder
Joel Plaskett Emergency – Ashtray Rock
Junior Boys – So This Is Goodbye
Miracle Fortress – Five Roses
Patrick Watson – Close to Paradise
Chad VanGaalen - Skelliconnection

I haven’t heard the Miracle Fortress record at all, but I read that Jessie Stein plays guitar in the live band and I love her SS Cardiacs stuff, so that makes me interested. The only other record from the list that I haven’t heard is Patrick Watson’s.

Anyway, here are my thoughts on the others …

I love how The Besnard Lakes seem to have written their album title with this competition in mind. And aside from Miracle Fortress, they seem to be the biggest underdogs. But if the award was for “Most Epic Stoner-Rock Song” then they’d win hands down for “And You Lied To Me.”

If the award was given for a body of work, I think Julie Doiron would and should win (with Joel Plaskett nipping at her heels). And part of me thinks Julie should win anyway. These days I feel like Woke Myself Up is the best of her solo records—probably because it reminds me most of Eric’s Trip.

I was a little surprised to see Joel Plaskett make the list, considering that Ashtray Rock is a pretty straight-ahead rock album. It is a narrative concept album, though, so I guess the whole is more ambitious and clever than its parts. And Joel proved once again that not only is he a decent songwriter, he’s a great albumwriter. (Meghan Harrison, if you’re reading this, I’m looking forward to our next “The best Joel Plaskett record is …” argument.)

Feist is too popular to win. If the prize wasn’t money, she might have a chance, but I just can’t imagine the jurors allowing themselves to give her the cash. Whether Steve Jordan likes to admit it or not, the Polaris Prize was created as a response to the laughable Junos to recognize the supremely talented, but underappreciated and underpaid, music artists in the country, and the jurors know this.

Same goes for The Arcade Fire. But their previous work probably poses even bigger competition for them than their fame. Funeral may not officially be in the competition, but no judge is going to reward the band for making a lesser album. And Neon Bible is definitely a lesser album.

You could say that for a lot of the nominees, actually: I like Gang of Losers, but The Dears haven’t done anything that comes close to touching the down-and-out beauty of End of a Hollywood Bedtime Story; The Reminder isn’t as good as Let it Die; and Skelliconnection isn’t as good as Infiniheart (my jury is still out on Julie and Joel).

If I had a vote, I’d probably give the $20,000 to either Julie Doiron or Chad VanGaalen (probably Julie), but my hunch is that the cash will go to the Junior Boys, which would be good; So This Is Goodbye is a beautiful record.

In a very Canadian way, some of the country’s music critics have already turned on the prize, one year after it was so widely praised (see here and here, specifically). The criticisms are mainly about the lack of diversity among the nominees; how all the nominees are white indie rockers. They criticize the jurors for not including any Francophone or hip hop artists, specifically. Last year at least had Malajube, K’naan and Cadence Weapon, they say.

But I’m not ready to jump off the Polaris bandwagon just yet. There are flaws with the process, for sure, but I still think it’s something worth celebrating—and I don’t see anything wrong with giving any of the nominees 20 large to help them make another record.

I do agree with Dave Morris's criticism; there should be less jurors. There aren't enough credible music authorities in the country to merit a 174-person jury. The fact of the matter is that most of the jurors probably get paid peanuts to write about music while working other jobs and/or going to school. They can't give every album the attention it deserves and they can't be expected to be well-versed in multiple genres--at least not for what most of them probably get paid. At least that was my experience.

The shortlist is heavily weighted towards indie rock because the pool of people Steve Jordan drew from to make up the jury (music journalists, college radio programmers, influential bloggers) are largely indie-rock fans who write about and review indie rock bands for publications and radio stations that focus their content on indie-rock music. There are a few exceptions, of course. The above-linked Dave Morris, for instance, is a knowledgeable and credible critic in lots of different genres; I just don't think there are more than a dozen Dave Morrises on the jury.

Jordan could work harder in future years to diversify his jury selection; that would be much better than trying to influence the jurors decision by mandating nominees from certain genres. The prize is not supposed to give any consideration to “genre or record sales,” and I wouldn’t want them to veer from that spirit.

I think the heavy indie-rock quotient also has a lot to do with the fact that indie-rockers dominate the touring circuit in Canada, and music writers and radio programmers—especially the ones that work for certain-city-centric print publications and community radio stations—focus their writing and listening energies on bands that play their towns. The fact of the matter is that hip hop acts, turntablists, jazz bands, DJs, classical orchestras, opera singers, and Francophone rock bands don’t usually do the kind of touring that English-singing guitar bands do.

That being said, my shortlist probably would’ve included Land of Talk’s Applause, Cheer, Boo, Hiss; Shout Out Out Out Out’s Not Saying/Just Saying, Jon-Rae and The River’s Knows What You Need Holy Fuck’s self-titled EP and Les Breastfeeders’ Les matins de grand soirs. I would’ve left Miracle Fortress, Patrick Watson, Feist, Arcade Fire and The Besnard Lakes off my list.

Can anyone name a Canadian hip hop record that they felt should’ve cracked the top 10? I was kind of expecting Classified to squeak in. But I have to admit, I don’t know much Canadian hip hop from last year. I did like what I heard from Les is More and The Carps, though. I actually thought The Carps were going to be huge, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. I listened to their debut album on a whim while working at CFRC, and it was like a mix of Bloc Party and Death From Above 1979, but with house-like beats and cheeky rhymes about Scarborough. And with Bloc Party going all soft and moody (read: boring) with their latest album and DFA79 biting the dust, I thought The Carps would swoop right in to fill the void.

But I was probably most surprised that Fucked Up’s album from earlier this year didn’t crack the Top 10. It wouldn’t be on my personal list, but I really thought there’d be more aged metalheads or punks or math-rock geeks among the jury that would’ve considered Hidden World to be manna from heaven.

In closing … I think my vote would go to Julie Doiron.

But what I would love the most is if B.A. Johnston could somehow win as a last-minute write-in. Imagine how many Casio keyboards and how much poutine he could buy with $20,000.

Happy Women's Day!

"Wathinta abafazi, wathinta imbokodo" (You strike a woman, you strike a rock)"

Today is Women's Day in South Africa. It commemorates a day in 1956 when 20,000 women marched to government buildings in Pretoria to protest against a law requiring black women to carry passes.

Erin and I made cookies to give to the security guards in our neighbourhood, and anyone else, who like us, is working on this public holiday.

I tried looking for uplifting stories about women in SA papers today, but so far haven't turned up much. Here's one, with a great headline, about the opening of a photo exhibit showcasing photos from the march in 1956 and of other South African women.

Here's something else that's pretty good. The article in the M&G's hard copy is a lot better, but it seems that the paper and the web version are only complementary, not identical, because I can't seem to find the article anywhere on the website. This part makes me hopeful: "Tshabalala-Msimang said an important finding was that infections in women under 20 years had continued to decline to 13,7% from 16,1% in 2004 and 15,9% in 2005."

28 Launch

me&stephforblog
Originally uploaded by BK 14

Stephanie and I at the launch of 28 in South Africa. The night was great: free wine, Ethiopian finger foods, Stephanie's beautiful and hilarious baby boy.

I bought a copy of the book for my parents and Stephanie wrote a funny inscription. All in all, a very nice night.

You can click the photo to see a few more from last night, but uploading photos really puts a dent in my "data bundle" so I didn't post them all.

28 in SA

I'm just getting ready to head out to the launch of 28 in South Africa. I'll post the photos tonight.

Oh, and today was the first meeting of the weekly creative writing group I'm facilitating in Hillbrow. I think it went pretty well for the first "class", but I kind of feel like I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

I'll post more soon.

It seems that every third person I meet is a Zimbabwean

There's lots to say about what's going on in Zimbabwe, but I didn't know where to start, and the situation seems to be deteriorating at such a rate that it was hard to keep up.

Anyway, here's a short article that quickly illustrates the impact of the situation on SA, but provides little in the way of context. It's also kind of problematic in that it subtly blames the refugees for potentially creating instability in SA and not, say, the power-crazed dictator who's rapidly destroying what was once one of Africa's largest economies.

If you're interested in the "situation," I just found this, which provides a daily compendium of Zimbabwe news stories from sources around the world. The first story in yesterday's batch - and other stories like it - make it especially frustrating to read about the gentle diplomacy practiced by Mbeki and other regional leaders towards Mugabe.

...

Earlier in the week, I interviewed a few people about migrants, refugees and xenophobia as part of the research I'm doing for work. One was the co-director of an organization called Gender Justice and the other was the director of an organization called Engender Health. We happened to touch on the Zimbabwean "situation" and what it means for South Africa. They both called on the South African and Johannesburg governments to do something to tackle xenophobia, but they had very different ideas of what should be done to deal with all the people. The Engender Health guy said that the problem has become so dire that the country should set up refugee camps near the borders to take care of all the undocumented migrants; the Gender Justice guy said that we have to work harder to integrate Zimbabweans into South African society and ensure that they are aware of the rights and resources available to them.

I understand there are significant economic and social strains put on the country by the daily stream of refugees, but I have to agree with Mr. Gender Justice: I don't see how creating crowded refugee camps would do anything but create more problems for South Africa and for relations between everyday Zimbabweans and South Africans.

I'll do some more posting on this a bit later. (I know, I say this a lot)

Do other people know about this?

A friend just showed me this a few days ago.

Apparently the black screen saves energy, and it's the exact same search engine as Google.

The explanation is here.