IMAGINE being transported Out of Africa, Incredible India or Mother Russia with a dash of lilting soundtracks from Hollywood to Bollywood blockbusters plus a dash of memory lane musical hits of Asimbonanga, The Gods Must Be Crazy, From Russia With Love, and Ennio Morricone’s haunting philharmonic strains of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – all in one week of historical significance and cultural heritage
DURBAN DATELINE:
As the lull of the 20-month Covid-19 pandemic stay-work from a safe house began thawing, it was time to take the Sh’ot Left and lap up our unique crossroads of arts and culture.
The worldwide pandemic left stages completely bare and turned the drama and opera auditoriums into ghost houses, from The Playhouse to London’s global capital of the arts – like New York – the melting of nationalities, cultures and languages – and artists were left devastated and jobless on the cash-strapped scale of the buskers who sing for their supper in underground train subways and street corners.
It was a classic case of Durban déjà vu when I returned to The Playhouse, the city’s prestige place of top-rated arts and cultural productions, and home of the world-ranked KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra – still standing majestically as a picture-postcard image from Disneyland – with its architectural and aesthetic integrity in tact from its colonial-apartheid era. Christmas also came early as Durban hosted a series of arts and cultural programmes. Commemorating the epic and historical journey of the 1860 Indian indentured labourers on 16 November, spiritual-cultural leader Ishwar Ramlutchman hosted a banquet to pay homage to the stoical semi-slaves from India on the 161st anniversary of the landing of the boat people on our shoreline. Roshini George retraced the footsteps of the culturally-rich indentured tribe with her intricate sequences and steps of a dance routine of Bharata-Natyam, tracing its roots to Mother India’s sacred socio-religious tapestry.
The Bollywood Song and Dance show featured the North Indian dance style, Kathak, as a 12-member troupe of young and lively dancers strutted and jived to a hybrid of mixed dancing styles from ancient to modern sequences. A six-piece ensemble of the Tansen Nepaul Showband dished out brilliant tunes to back up vocalists Umita Kalyan and Preetesh Singh, as the duo belted out the best of Bollywood film songs and topped the music lovers’ appetite for golden oldie favourites from the big screens.
The spectacle is the labour of love for dance doyenne, Smeetha Maharaj, and her husband, Rakesh, of the Nateshwar Dance Company, who must be credited for the production, design and direction of India’s stunning landscape images as the digital backdrops. Then we were treated to the cultural diplomacy of Mother Russia and South Africa when the curtains of Days of Culture Without Borders opened to a fascinating repertoire of homegrown music fusions from big-star singing sensation, Thandiswa Mazwai, backed musically by the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Chad Hendricks, featuring music maestros from a dozen countries. Thee Legacy revived memories of Nelson Mandela, who was seated a few rows ahead of us during Surialanga’s pioneering and post-democratic dance fusions of Indian-Zulu artists in the 1990s, when the quartet did their foot-stompin’ act with Johnny Clegg’s Asimbonanga singing salute to Mandela. The vibrantly powerful Sivuyile Nonzame Xhosa Traditional Dancers; Afrikan Heritage Ensemble and the Lonaka Lo Kae Cultural Group brought out the Out of Africa images of throbbing dances from the traditional routines to the ancient Khoisan song and dance had the ushers and VIP guests dancing in the aisles.
A collaboration between Moscow and Pretoria, the special concert was short and sweet because the performances were filmed and produced for Russian online-streaming TV. Cultural diplomacy is a new term that has been coined from this extraordinary, cross-border show: the ambassadors who brought arts and culture devotees together are board chairwoman Khwezi Kunene, husband-and-wife CEOs Bongani Tembe (orchestra) Lynda Bukhosini (artistic director), Arts and Culture Deputy Director Thapi Segoati and Mikhail Kosarev, press attaché at the embassy of the Russian Federation.
For me, memories of my first show at the hallmark hub of arts and culture – Welsh superstar Tom Jones, belting out his hit-makers, Delilah to Green, Green Grass of Home to the Motown’s The Platters, Isaac Hayes, Dobie Gray and many other big-band artists – flowed back.
“Take in the arts and culture in London,” my media union and political mentor, Zwelakhe Sisulu, quipped as I set out for the UK to further my studies in journalism. I did – enjoying maestro Zubin Mehta and the European Union Philharmonic Orchestra at the Barbican – and again enjoyed his extraordinary skills as a conductor at the city hall.
MARLAN PADAYACHEE is a seasoned journalist and former mainstream political and diplomatic correspondent, serves on Gopio International’s media council, ambassador at City University of London, media-communications bodies, SAFREA, SANEF, IAJ, heads MapMedia GreenGold Consulting (Pty) Limited, recipient of prestige international scholarship and fellowship, media awards; and continues to research and write columns, articles and opinion-editorial commentary for newspapers, magazines, TV and radio, online digital and social media platforms – without fear or favour nor prejudice ; and may be contacted via: marlan.padayachee@gmail.com
