kagablog

Danger!:Matches!:Unyazi!!

While the rest of Capetonia are stumbling and cursing around in Eskom’s continuing festival of ‘But is it Light?’, my curiously bopping smile joins several dozen other smiles and frowns and indecisively dancing (twitching?) limbs in celebration of a very different species of Dark. Righard Kapp (local fretboard-astronaut and member of Buckfever Underground) is busy coaxing curiouser and curiouser notes and squiggles from the outskirts of his guitar. The guy dancing to my left is now definitely twitching – if delightedly.

‘Unyazi’ is the Zulu term for lightning – that fantastical yellow snake that erupts from beyond to illuminate in crackling branches patterns hid in the dark. Unyazi explodes, always electrically, always in new patterns, always most impressively in the dark. And so does lightning.

Inaugurated in 2005, the Unyazi fests represent the ‘electronic’ branch of New Music SA’s ventures into the promotion and celebration of original contemporary composition. Accent here on ‘original’. Rejoining The International Society For Contemporary Music in 2000, after an Apartheid-Era absence of four decades, New Music SA, led by celebrated local composer and pianist, Michael Blake, kicked off their annual Indabas – celebrations of contemporary Classical and ‘Other’ musics.

Unyazi 2005 was New Music SA’s inaugural exploration into the quantum glints and sonic sleight-of-hand of electronic instrumentation. Congregating at Wits University were such lauded international figures as George Lewis (AACM); the recently-returned Louis Moholo; sometime John Zorn collaborators Lukas Ligetti, Matthew Ostrowski, & Mark Applebaum; and the legendary Halim El-Dabh, one of the pioneers of electronica whose cv includes having worked with Igor Stravinski, Edgard Varese, and John Cage (say no more). Joining them were ao. local luminaries Zim Ngqawana, Warrick Sony (Kalahari Surfers), James Webb and Jonathan Crossley.

Unyazi 2005 was a revelation of sound. Warrick Sony created a jam-session between Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the avant-garde of Stockhausen (and a fish-eagle); Matthew Ostrowski made Aphex Twin sound elementary with his endlessly layered oceans of sound, improvised live with his portable electro-orchestra; French Canadian Maxime Rioux introduced his automaton, a mutated ensemble of African, Classical, and ‘found’ instruments which plays, and conducts!, itself.

Yes, yes – Unyazi 2008 hasn’t kicked off yet (I was taking a jump to the left..). Curated by James Webb, local aural provocateur; this year’s Unyazi is themed “Fear of the Known: Extreme listening”, and takes place at the University of Cape Town (March 12), University of Stellenbosch (March 14 & 15), and then takes a jump to the right to Wits (March 16). In addition to performances, Unyazi is structured to facilitate discussion between artists (and attendees), featuring various workshops and lectures. So if you’re working on the Next ‘Richard D James Album’; obsessively collect rare WARP vinyls; have ever been involved in a heated Autechre vs. Aphex Twin discussion; or get all giddy when whispers of the latest Waddy or Wormstorm album do the rounds – get your digital ass down to catch Unyazi illuminating unexplored skies of sound.

In addition to Mr Kapp, artists confirmed include James’s Sey and Webb, Warrick Sony, USA’s Brandon LaBelle, the Kemus Ensemble, European noise outfit Sudden Infant, Theo Herbst, POW, Ulrich Susse, Asmus Tietchens and various other odd wonders.

Lights down, ears up!