This day started really early, well at least for me. I still haven’t adjusted to the 7 hour time difference. Normally we’re getting up when people back home are going to bed. Also, the sun rises around 4:45am here. So in addition to trying to sleep in the night at the equivalent of about 5:00 or 6:00 in the afternoon back home, I also have the beautiful, brilliant, bright, vivid and intense sunlight articulating every detail in my room….even my eyelids. It’s so bright that these curtains do no good.
We did a workshop for kids at The Music Academy of Gauteng. One of South Africa’s greatest jazz Musicians, Johnny Mekoa, started this music school for kids in the area of Davidson that have a desire to learn and play jazz. When we got out of our transport van, Mekoa said “Welcome Homeâ€. It felt really good to hear that. Mekoa studied in the US as a Fulbright scholar and brought his experiences back to South Africa. The facility was incredibly nice and the equipment was comparable, if not better to stuff that we use on gigs in the states.
We performed for them and showed how we incorporate various musical elements in the songs we play. We also showed how small technical adjustments could totally change the feel and perception of any song. They really enjoyed us, singing along to the hooks of songs, dancing and clapping along. It was kinda funny to see these jazz students going crazy over hip hop. They performed for us as well and I was quite impressed to see students so young playing jazz so well. It was obvious that they were getting great instruction.
Che and Richard are the jazz heads of the group and Jason and I are the hip hop heads of the group. So, Jason and I got one of the students to freestyle and the kid was actually quite good. I started to ask questions about how American hip hop influenced the area and one of the questions I asked was: Do you catch crunk music here? The kid was like “Do you mean like Lil John?…Nah man we don’t like that stuff. I mean, I like his beats and all, but we like more conscious rap here.†He suggested that Lil John re-think is position. It was interesting to hear that from someone outside of the strong holds of American culture.
