Monkey Funk (or lack thereof)

Sea lion is first non-human animal to keep a beat

Ronan is the first known non-human mammal successfully trained to bob her head in time with a metronome-like sound — and then to apply her new skill to tempos and music she had not previously heard, according to researchers at the Long Marine Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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This is the biggest news in auditory (or at least musical) animal behavior, right now. Make sure you get to the bottom of the linked page where you will be rewarded with video evidence. It will be worth your while.

Reminds me of a similar, recent article featuring rhesus macaques. I was quite surprised to find that I had not previously written a post about said article. I won't let it by me a second time.

In this article, the authors describe results which suggest that macaques can detect rhythmic perception, but not beat induction (according to the earlier study, sea lions are the only mammal other than humans that can do both). The theory that there is a distinction between these two faculties is know as the dissociation hypothesis.

None of these terms are intuitively obvious. Beat induction is the ability to detect regularity of beats in a rhythm. It is what gives us our ability to tap our foot along with the beat in a song. Rhythmic perception merely refers to the ability to tell that some specific amount of time has passed. This sort of timing work has been studied extensively in many animal species, and it is well known that pretty much all mammals can time intervals. In fact, I have myself done some work demonstrating rhesus macaques' flexibility in timing intervals (Diapadion et al, unpublished results or something).

There is a major drawback to this monkey study: there is no behavioral data. It is entirely EEG. In many ways, I prefer EEG to fMRI or electrophysiology for brain imaging. EEG takes a distributed look at the activity of billions of neurons, unlike eletrophysiology, where you isolate signals from single neurons and pretend that the entire brain region surrounding acts the same way. fMRI also takes a distributed look at brain activity; in fact it is often more accurate than EEG. Unfortunately you can't put monkey into a MRI scanner unless the monkey has been knocked unconscious. You have to stay still in the scanner to get good data, and monkeys, well, they're not so good at that, ever.

fMRI is also superior to EEG because fMRI allows you to see deep into the brain, whereas EEG only lets you look at surface areas because it is on the surface of the skull that you place the EEG electrodes. There might be something going on deep in the auditory cortices that the authors' EEG findings are missing. Which is why it would be nice to see some results from additional metrics. Practically speaking, I don't believe it is likely that the authors are mistaken; the primate literature supports their hypothesis.

In the sea lion video, the speaker suggests that beat keeping may be far more widespread in the animal kingdom than previously thought. No, probably not. This EEG study suggests that monkeys are totally incapable of beat induction, and it stands to reason (and evidence) that this holds for other primates. As it stands, convergent evolution is the most likely explanation.

Honing, H., Merchant, H., Háden, G., Prado, L., & Bartolo, R. (2012). Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulatta) Detect Rhythmic Groups in Music, but Not the Beat PLoS ONE, 7 (12) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0051369

Awesome Tapes from Africa

This is a sweet find, and I wish I could remember who originally linked me to this.

Awesome Tapes from Africa is a side project of a Brian Shimkovitz, who apparently did extensive work studying contemporary forms of music deep in Africa. There isn't so much South Africa in here because of how comparatively visible the country is, but I'm grateful for that, since at this point I don't need much help discovering local SA music.

The variety you can find is this site is exceptional. The site showcases pretty much everything under the sun that sits between the lowest-fi traditional recordings and modern electronica hip-hop. So basically its kind of like the awesome radio show, Afro-pop worldwide (which I highly recommend the podcast for), minus the worldwide part. Plus, Shimkovitz makes the entire tape available... Though it is a little funky how all of the music comes from cassettes still. I suppose they are much more durable in the cases than CD's are.

I almost wish I had discovered the site earlier in my stay, except that oh wait, my internet would never have allowed me to take advantage of the audio.

Heavy Monkey Rock & Roll

Tuesday already. Hoppzor sent me this article (thanks again) a short while back, and it seemed like something worth sharing.

Heavy metal music and monkeys? How silly. Some monkeys apparently like Metallica though.

Since this is just the Daily Mail we're talking about, this short article doesn't link to the actual publication... if one exists. No direct indication of a paper was ever made, so these might just be "findings," lacking any peer review.

And since today's post is a little short, I'll throw in a bonus amusing and disturbing recent clip from a press conference with South Africa's Julius Malema, President of the ANC Youth League.
There are few living individuals I believe can be better described as "infamous."

Assemble!

We went to see the South African "musical sensation" Gazelle down at the Assembly the other night, and it was quite a blast. My encounter with Gazelle began many months ago, back at the Daisies festival. Let me read to you from the info booklet:  
An experiment with electronic bedroom music led Gazelle to discover a fresh mix of reggae dub and electro sound, leading the African music renaissance.

What? 

At Daisies, I didn't manage to see Gazelle, at least not performing. He went on at midnight on Saturday, and there was no way I was staying up that late. According to the people I talked to at the festival, he was the odd fellow wandering around the whole time in a leopard print jumpsuit. Hmmm. They didn't have any better idea how to describe his music, though, so I remained in the dark.

Later, I spoke to some other South African about the music scene down here, and Gazelle came up. "What is his music actually like?" I asked them. The best they could manage was that it was like Funkadelic. Well, I thought, I have seen George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars live, and that was pretty bumpin, so maybe this Gazelle fellow will be alright.

Fast forward several months, and The Assembly comes into the picture. I'd heard about it back in October, but never got around to going down to the place. Its located at the edge of District Six, in a former industrial sector. The building itself was formerly a warehouse, and has been renovated to support musical acts and dancing, while maintaining that grungy factory feel.

Last week, I heard that Gazelle was coming back into town from his Kalahari Safari across Europe. And he was playing at the Assembly, tickets only R40. That sounded to me like a good deal. Tickets were obtained and plans were made.

Upon arriving, we were instantly taken by the place. For Bostonians, its about the same size as the Paradise, and follows a similar layout aesthetic. We were made to suffer through the openers, sadly. The Plastics are an indie rock band. They look and sound like every other generic indie rock band. Next was Jack Parow, an Afrikaans rapper, and his crew. They were....uh... well it was hard to understand him what with the whole Afrikaans thing. Think of Asher Roth, but imagine that Roth had grown up on a Dutch horse farm. If you don't know who Asher Roth is, thank your lucky stars, and heed the inevitable conclusion: It wasn't great.

Then Gazelle took the stage with his DJ, drummer, bongo player, and dance troupe.

Twas awesome. I had not realized it, but the DJ is pretty much an equal partner in the musical vision of Gazelle. He's got a kind of Daft Punk thing going on since he wears this helmet and visor which prevents you from seeing his face. He was good, and full of energy, too. Its surprisingly fun to notice the DJ having a really good time behind the booth. The rest of the crew was similarly adorned in Southern African attire, ranging in style from traditional African to colonial, to military. Gazelle the singer was wearing a different leopard print uniform, and sporting the shades ala Funkadelic (and I can understand what they were saying about the similarity in sound, mostly with the synths).

Its amazing what you can still do with a stationary laser and a disco ball.  Down in the pit, it was quite a mad dance party. I felt the lighting was no small part of that, but that might just be me and my fervent joy for good light effects doing the talking. Regardless, the party was good times, as empirically determined by the amount of sweat generated by my body

You can listen to Gazelle on myspace, and that will give you a reasonable idea of how they sound, though hardly an inkling of how they feel. Studio tracks are always missing some things that can't be taken out of the live setting. Like the excessive bass, and trace drums beats. Like the leopard costumes and African dancers.

For lack of any better description for the music, I am going to go with the words straight from the White Lion himself: Afrikan Future Disko.

After walking around a bit today, I found my ankle a bit wonky. I think I did something to it last night. Prices are high at the Bushland Discotheque.

Live from a field in South Africa, Part II

As promised, I now present to you the long awaited sequel to my previous silly concert post. Big American, or rather, big foreign bands don't tend to bother touring South Africa too often. From what I heard form a couple people I met at the concert, neither Radiohead nor Coldplay, who are both huge and ought to have a big British fanbase here, have ever toured this country. According to The Killers themselves, this is the first time they've been around here.

Right, so it was The Killers I went to see on a warm Sunday evening at the start of the December summer. As one might expect, the journey was more of a tale than the concert itself was. Here was the scoop - the parking opened at 4. The doors opened at 6. First band started at 7. Killers came on at 8. That was the plan. I went into this thinking that the show itself started at 6 and I was unaware of any openers. It turned out to be a good thing the Killers came on 2.5 hours later than I expected.

As I understand it, Cape Town, or rather, South Africa, does not catch the eye of big-time bands very often. So, when a band at the peak of its popularity comes through and the Capetonians haven't seen a real music act in some time, everyone seems to go. Well, all the British people, anyhow. The other Capetonians go if they like the band. The next day, there were people all over who I'd run into mentioning the concert, offhand. Often, specifically about how blasted they felt from the previous night.

Upon reaching Paarl, the site of this episode's dusty field, I realized I wasn't sure which exit to get off at. After bumbling around for about 20 minutes, I found my "people" and then realized I could just follow them to the source. Unfortunately, the source was a long way away, and the traffic was only moving slower and slower. I was doing passably well since I had the original plays of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on my player, but then the battery died. Bloody.

At one point, my neighbors directly in front of me left one of their passengers stranded (...20 meters behind) when the traffic abruptly lurched ahead for several seconds. Being the good Samaritan and novel opportunist that I am, I immediately offered to give her a lift... after she asked me for one, of course.

Name was Angela, she goes to UCT, and lives very nearby me. Not a bad deal. So, we chatted about studies and music and what in the blazes some crazy American is doing here.

Allow me a moment of exaltation. I do thoroughly enjoy the camaraderie that springs up amongst fans in such situations. I also like the fact that it quickly disappears to be replaced by harsh animosity when it comes to pushing your way through the crowd.

Angela went back to her car eventually, and the painful traffic subsided somewhat once I exited the highway.

Note to self: When driving to an event whose venue you are not familiar with - its probably best to just do what they tell you. No wait, I can't really be telling myself this. Okay me, nevermind this, I'll figure out what I was really getting at later.

I parked some distance away from the field, not realizing just how far I would need to go. Angela's advice was sadly misinforming. 200 meters was the distance to the road which lead to the field, but the field was some distance further down that road. Some means a lot.

I walked down four stretches of dusty road, alongside the slow stream of motorized vehicles which I barely outpaced. I was not alone, at least, for many had elected to park and walk as I was doing. However, for each turn down a smaller and dustier road, my spirits began to fall. How bloody far away was this place? My retrospective guess is 3 kilometers.

I arrived at the stage. Like, I said, it was a concert. In my opinion, it is difficult for concert not to be enjoyable when you're going to see a band you like and are familiar with. I wandered about the vast field for a few moments, scoping out the food and beer lines. I was nearly tempted to get in line for a burger, but then Human started playing so to hell with the burger. Flowers was even wearing that silly coat with the furry shoulders.

The crowd was large and packed. Nevertheless, I was able to push quite close to the boundary of the proletarian section. As I wormed closer to the stage, a few times I encountered some small and shrinking holes in the crowd, where everywhere around 'twas a mob. I investigated and found people hurriedly rolling up their blankets and packing their tupperwares away.

At last, revenge is mine!

That's right picnickers, I thought to myself, this is going to be a concert so you best just get up and scram. We want to the make the most of our tickets and have a crowd here, not just sit on towels, sip tea, and munch biscuits. Also, they're called COOKIES.

One of the more amusing moments of the concert itself was when you could see the violinist/sequencer guy singing along to the lyrics for everyone to see on the jumbotrons.

Flower's has a really weird voice. I don't think I've ranted about this as much as I ought (as much as I love burger king, for instance). Even when he's just talking, his voice is bizarre. Uniqueness can be a virtue in music, and he can actually sing unlike the majority of "indie rockers." Though he does look like he might be suffering from anorexia.

The set was good. You can judge it here. I think the set was a bit short for what they usually do, but I'm not very sure of this. In anticipation of the part where everyone in the crowd shouts "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier" for 6 minutes during All These Things I've Done, I had my camera out for video. Alas, the memory card murdered this creation. Instead, I have found a superior video montage for you to watch.

So. I'd done my homework and was up to speed on how the Killers do their encores. I wanted out of that place quick, but I did want to see and hear the last songs in the encore. I waited outside the gate where I still had a decent view, then dashed when they finished playing When You Were Young.

And I ran. I would stop occasionally on the way back to hang with some groups of people in order to catch my breath and assuage my fear of being suddenly stabbed to death by some madman hiding in the vineyards. Eventually I reached the outer reaches, where I associated myself with a pair (those mentioned at the beginning) of colored people.

I think they were Indian, but it was hard to tell. There are also the Malay around here, who are not to be confused with Malaysians. Don't do that. We discussed much of the usual stuff like What in the blazes am I doing here and How do you like Cape Town? These two had a much more interesting and refreshing view on Cape Town, but both were still very positive about the city in spite of its dysfunction.

Second note to self: Avoid driving to concerts. You've been spoiled by going to the Palladium. Driving to big events is awful.

Yet, safely succeeded in reaching the car, and from there I drove back to Cape Town for some much desired sleep.  The traffic was likely caught at a bottleneck much closer to the field, for I had no trouble getting back on the highway or riding the N1 back to CT.

...until I accidentally got onto the N7.
I hate the N7.

World Cup 2010 Final Draw

Some people (oh you know, a few hundred million) watched the Final Draw for next year's World Cup, which is being held here, in South Africa. I watched it to... sort of. I wasn't one of the lucky few international celebrities and figureheads who sat in the Cape Town International Convention Center (CTICC) where the proper draw took place. However, I was on Long Street, which is where all the real people went for the draw.

It was a Friday, and Fridays can be tiring, but eventually one just learns to buck up and stay up 36 hours if necessary in order to make sure one doesn't miss any of the fun. The Draw had two primary appeals: 1. big party lots of people and mad excitement, 2. some bands (Freshlyground most notably) were going to play for free. I didn't really care about the brackets, though watching other people watch the brackets can be rather enlightening.

So, I grabbed Rainer and we drove into the city center to search for parking. That was fun. We ended up landing a spot in the well-known Bo-Kaap Moslem neighborhood. Pictures the vividly painted Bo-Kaap houses are very often used in tourist paraphernalia promoting Cape Town. I was very much surprised to find the neighborhood four streets away from Long. I was under the impression is was a suburb unto itself, reasonably far out into the reaches.

I was mildly sketched out by parking there, but everyone was parking everywhere and we saw people walking down from much higher up the slope ascending to Table Mountain. This was a special night, and the police were everywhere. If you see police in Cape Town, then I would say you are in a safe place.

The crowds at the entrances and the extremely poor loudspeaker kept us out of the party until we found a back way inside. We arrive about a half hour before the draw business was set to start, so we grabbed some beers from the handy vendors and began to weave closer to the stage at the end of Long Street.

This place was packed, and there were only more people entering the zone. We were later told that more than 120,000 people were in there with us.

Once we had reached a satisfactory position, we settled to enjoy K'Naan's performance. Then the jumbotrons kicked into top gear and we were assaulted with an over dramatic montage of the cup trophy's travels through Africa to reach Cape Town. And then they did some history segments and some introductions and personal stories segments.

Finally, they cut to the CTICC where Johnny Clegg performed a slightly awkward rendition of Scatterlings of Africa. Maybe it was awkward because Mchunu (you know, the black half of Juluka) wasn't there playing alongside Johnny.

Oh well, I was confident Zuma and the FIFA President could somehow improve the show. They chose the smart move and played a recorded video from Nelson Mandela.

Now you see, Mandela is a pretty big deal. Probably the biggest cheers of that entire evening came during Mandela's speech when everyone, white, colored, and black screamed in excitement. "Madiba madiba madiba!" This was one of those times where I dazedly looked around and the full impact of my situation bludgeoned me in the face. I live in Africa. Holy shit.

I have no clue as to how the rest of the continent feels about this, but South Africa very much wants to show off this world cup as being the whole of Africa's world cup. This is, after all, the first cup to be held on this continent, and in South Africa, football is much more the sport of the blacks than the whites (What is? Rugby.)

Then the message ended, and the orange Dutch upstairs went back to tooting their horns and we all went back to yelling expletives at them.

The show continued, featuring more annoying history features and eventually Charlize Theron. For Arrested Development fans: Rita has a pretty strong accent. I'm betting Theron normally has a pretty noticeable accent. At the draw, she sounded as American as I've ever heard her be. Other guests included Ethiopian marathon pimp Haile Gebrselassie and David "Fauxhawk" Beckham. Finally the draw could begin.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to really gain much from the painfully drawn out process of selecting teams and then selecting slots for the aforementioned team. However, the allegiances in the audience were highly variable, and I'll admit that I care for the success of the US team. It still seemed most fitting to alternate between yelling obscenities at Beckham's ridiculously haired head and at the Dutch punks who seemed to gain no end of pleasure from being as loud as possible.

Finally the torment was ended and everyone cheered some more. Freshlyground would be playing soon, at long last. However, both Rainer and I were very hungry, and decided to seek sustenance before the music began.

Unsurprisingly, all the food places were swamped, even my favorite dingy falafel joint. We agreed that the wait was not worth our time, so we wouldn't stick around too long. Plus, more beer would assuredly ease our hunger pangs. We returned to the stage area, yet something felt amiss. No one had started playing during out brief absence, and no one was coming on stage. Freshlyground appeared to be taking their dear sweet time. In the meantime, we got down with it among the natives.

Then some crazy old woman singer came on and started belting antiquarian South African pop jingles at us. The natives certainly seemed to know every last lyric, but they were lost on a German and an American. As far as I could gather, Freshlyground just didn't play, and I missed the announcement. The few fireworks were small consolation.

"Yeah, let's just go."

So we did. We obtained delicious food elsewhere, which was a bit of a task in of itself, but turned out alright in the end. It was quite late by the time we departed, which makes me comfortable in saying that we made the most of such a raucous free event.

World AIDS Day and South Africa

Since I am the type of person whose scientific interest is piqued by watching baboons copulate, it should not come as much of a surprise that I like to read the blogs over at Kinsey Confidential, which is basically the internet gateway to the (in)famous Kinsey Institute. Recently I was scanning the ol' RSS feeds and my eyes immediately saccaded to the title: "South Africa, World AIDS Day, Music, and More."

Most people are aware of the AIDS problem in Africa. The particularly bad version of the problem seen in South Africa is not as widely known. To put it mildly, its damn bad. But, I won't ruin the post for you; have yourself a read. Even I learned a few things, for instance,

...in South Africa, the question of providing condoms in residence halls isn’t a question at all. In fact, condom dispensers, like the one pictured above, can be found throughout university campuses, in the offices of many faculty and administrators, as well as public restrooms throughout the country.

Have I ever used a public restroom in South Africa? I'm not sure I was even aware that they existed! I hope they're better than in Japan...

Johnny Clegg at Kirstenbosch

Some may remember passing mentions of the individual known as Johnny Clegg. He plays World Music, particularly, a meld of Zulu traditions with European styles (like Celtic). He's a pretty sweet guy, making good music and pissing off the Apartheid regimes of the 80's by playing interracial music with an interracial band featuring lots of protest songs.

Every summer, the National Botanical Gardens at Kirstenbosch holds a series of sunset concerts. Clegg opened for this year's season. Clegg was the first musical act I was introduced to when I arrived, and I have quickly become a fan. I've been to Kirstenbosch before, and it is a picturesque garden to be sure. However, I've never been for a concert, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

 Shit! I hate sit-down-picnic-lawn concerts. I despise them more than life itself.

Please allow me to have a brief bit of your time to expand this hatred into one of my traditional rants. Premise: lawn concerts suck. Why do I think lawn concerts suck? Oh, let me tell you.

Firstly, if you don't realize it is a lawn concert, you also do not realize that everyone gets there early and sets up their huge blankets, propped chairs, and braai, because that's the only way to maximize your ability to be a huge asshole and take up as much prime space as possible. By the time I arrived (an hour before the start) there was not a speck of green grass showing under the blankets.

Secondly, because they've gone to all the trouble noted above, everyone just sits there the whole concert. By the end, people finally got into things and stood up. I think that most of them would have rather been sitting, but enough people were standing and blocking the view that critical mass was achieved and the chain reaction carried them all from there. However, once they began to stand, there was nothing to do but dance awkwardly in place. No pit, no mingling, no sense of... togetherness. This seems sort of important for the style and meaning of Johnny Clegg's music. And sure, I'm a little spoiled from being raised on Flogging Molly concerts.

Thirdly, everyone is a cut-throat about their space. In a pit, people are cut-throat as well, but there is no personal space and everyone knows that. In a pit, its an aggressive type of cut-throat; on the lawn, it is passive-aggressive. Everyone has some agenda or explanation to act unfriendly, whether it be kids or age or just longtime fandom and devotion. They will excuse away everything in the most lighthearted fashions, whereas in a pit, the word choice sounds more like "No, now stop pushing us, asshole."

Luckily for me I have been to enough concerts and understand how to best channel my own rage, so I did fine for myself. I sat myself down by the sidewalk and leaned up against a comfortable post. In exchange for finding a little extra room next to me to fit a kind Italian couple, I was offered a pad to sit on, and a glass of wine. This was my view of the stage:

..and that's all the pictures you get to see because someone involved with this concert forbid us to take pictures of the stage while the band was playing.

Thus far into the post, the setting has unfortunately overshadowed the music. This is because wild condemnation is much more interesting than thoughtful praise. And, that is all I've got for Mr. Clegg, I'm afraid. The music was great. Clegg had a great stage presence during and between songs - maybe all the South Africans knew the gist of his stories, but to an outsider they were quite thrilling and enlightening. I especially liked the strong saxophone element. I don't care what those darn critics say - the 80's got that right.

Anyway, here are some sample videos of the band:





This last clip is from a special concert in rememberance Nelson Mandela's decades long imprisonment on Robben's Island. My own story of the Robben's Island prison is interesting... and I haven't even been there yet! The tale itself ought to wait for that...

So the music was great, and despite being a lawn concert, I think I made the most of it.

Finally, I'd like to note my... numb surprise at the composition of the audience. It was about the same as the Daisies festival. This was interracial fusion music, but it was a bit depressingly white. For me, the most interesting guy in the audience was one of the ushers, a diminutive black fellow, who I could see soundlessly singing along with the lyrics while moving back and forth, directing people and keeping a an eye out.

Sigh.

Live from a field in South Africa, Part I

When I started this blog, I wanted to talk about primates and animal behavior a lot, but I also wished to chronicle my adventures through the culture and life of South Africa. This will be the first such dedicated post, and I hope my description lives up to experiences at Rocking the Daises 2009.

All of last week, I kept hearing tidbits from a few people here and there, in the real world and the online one, about some music festival in the Cape Town area. And aKING was playing. That was all I knew. Come Friday, I finally make some effort to see what the logistics and lineup is. In the process I found a sweet site that covers most of the goings ons in Cape Town, which ought to keep me busy and not bored for a while to come. It also told me that the festival started Friday, ran all Saturday and Sunday, was at some wine estate north of the city, and required I buy a ticket at the local coffee shop if they still had any left.

Day 1

I woke up early, and I jetted to the coffee shop (none other than Seattle's Best Coffee - haven't seen any Starbucks yet) and got my ticket... card. One of the main South African ticketing services came up with this idea of giving you a card with a bar code on it, and then when you buy a ticket, it goes on the card in their database, and they scan the card at entry.

Before you can use said card, you need to activate it. So I had to go back to the house and do that before getting out of the house with all my necessities. It was already past 10 and I was missing hard earned music. I hit the road.

The highways and roads in South Africa are a bit on the... slim side. Also the signs suck. This road kept switching between telling me I was on the M7 and the N7. Of course by then they were the same thing, but I kept thinking I had missed by turn. Getting out of Cape Town lead me by this fatty nuclear plant.

The highway is literally right next to the cooling towers, so that you can see the huge steel beams supporting the structures. About a kilometer beyond that, I found myself passing legitimate African shanty towns.

How... convenient. I bet their energy rates are superb!

Well, this was more like the Africa I had been lead to expect. So were the dudes by the side of the road trying to sell everyone giant batches of trash bags, 50 for 3 bucks. Once I got outside of the township areas and into the country, the trip became much less exciting. It generally just looks like a hilly landscape in the midwest when you're in the Western Cape region. There is still bush in South Africa, but you have to go a way.

Oh, right, how far do I have to go? I glanced at a sign: 40 miles?! What the fu-oh its in kilometers, damnit. Thus, I really didn't know how far I had to go or how long it would take since I really didn't have a good idea of how far a kilometer is in terms of a mile. Or how fast kilometers per hour is in terms of mph. But in theory I could reason this out and it would make sense. My mind didn't like this. It felt like it took way too long.

Finally, I pulled into the dirt road which signaled the final stretch. I was waiting in the... "queue" to pull into the lot, and glanced around at the ordinary but nonetheless scenic landscapes.

Hoooooly shit its an ostrich

I pulled into the dirty field and grabbed everything. Except my damn water bottle. Well, they must have some sort of solution to this, we're in the middle of nowhere, they can't just be selling people beer. Onwards!

My ticket/card worked like charm, and I got a pack of info with some warpaint, a condom, and a neat booklet inside. The booklet's map became useful in time, but at first was just confusing. Nonetheless, the really big stage and general source of noise made it pretty easy to figure out where I wanted to go.

Provided I knew where I was going at all. Which I didn't. All I knew was that this was some big music festival  with lots of rock and ethnic music, but the rock part meant there would likely be more white people which made it safer. And I paid 350 rand for two days, so it better be good.

Well, it appears that I had stumbled upon the Bonnaroo of South Africa. A dirty field in a relatively middle of nowhere location, filled with hippies camped out for three days, and lots of rock bands - some big mainstream headliners and a lot of indie and reggaeish stuff. Not as many jam bands, actually, I don't think there were any. More diverse in general from my glances at the Bonnaroo lineups of late. But, because there are only 10 million people in South Africa, it was definitely smaller.

I approached the main stage in time to catch the latter part of the Jack Mantis Band's performance. It was a standard band setup, except Jack sang and played acoustic rhythm, so they had no real lead guitarist. Instead, they had a saxophonist, which I might prefer in general, but was certainly glad to see since I had this strange feeling that I was going to be hearing plenty of electric guitar over the next two days. However, at the end they played this sweet rendition of All Along the Watchtower with the next act, a guitarist named Dan Patlansky.

Then Dan Patlansky played. He's in his late 20's, but he's the most prominent blues-rock guitar virtuoso in South Africa. And, he's really good. There's not a lot more I can say. The guy has incredible talent. But, watching a three piece band where the guitarist is the only one doing anything can get sort of old for an hour. I always did say I liked bands as full as possible.

One other little irksome thing (to me at least) about electric blues is that the vocalists have to have this raspy baritone thing going on. Patlansky definitely did, Mayer's got it, Vaughan did too, certainly Hendrix as well, plus all the black bluesmen. I've heard people say that it something about having soul. Well, what if Marvin Gaye sang electric blues? How would that sound?

Around this time my thirst levels crossed a threshold and initiated an irresistible appetitive behavior which cause me to seek potable water immediately. I had seen some ordinary looking boxes referred to as "Hydration Stations" all around, but no explanation or water source to accompany them. A quick look at the map told me there was one right between the beer huts near the stage. Upon closer inspection (read: talked to the dude giving out water bottles), I learned that the bottles they were giving out would allow me infinite refills. Unfortunately, the bottles cost 5 bucks (40 rand blah blah). I didn't bother asking if I could use their water with a different bottle (since I had left my behind) or if I could fill an empty beer can with water since that just didn't seem like a good plan to last me ten hours. Fine, give me your 40 rand bottle that says "Rocking the Daisies" on it. Now I won't buy a T-shirt unless I really like it.

I stayed by the stage for the "Red Bull Radar" which is this competition to see which up-and-coming band is gonna get this sweet record deal. The three that made it to the finals this year were a Passion Pit type dealie, a solo sensitive folk Jack Johnson type dude, and evil clown violin rodeo music. The last guys were really weird looking and sounding. I though they were going to win. But the unanimous decision came down in favor of the indie electronica dudes.

I'd had about enough by this point, and despite the allure of the saxophonist in the next group, I decided to head to the comedy tent. Yes, there was an exclusive comedy tent! Well, almost exclusive - they had these native drummers dudes playing in there for an hour, which I also listened to. The comedians then came on and joked about them for a while.

But comedy! And I was about to see the Best of the Fest lineup. Well, the tent was certainly packed. A good first sign. I managed to squeeze into the back. Behold my terrifically awful photography! You can't tell the comedian is Xhosa which made for great jokes!

As I watched these comedians, I began to realize a few things. 1, Afrikaners are weird. 2, Being South African is pretty much like being British, and if I recall, the British know their comedy. 3, imagine the civil war ended 20 years ago. Now imagine the racial comedy in that kind of atmosphere. Oh yeah.

They were all damn funny. However, the closer for that section, Rob van Vuuren, was absolutely amazing. He's definitely got a lot of physical and silly comedy, but the guy was absolutely hilarious. Midway through his extended routine, my face muscles hurt from laughing so much, and that hasn't happened in quite a while. He's pretty respected around here, and he does plenty of shows in Cape Town, so hopefully I'll have more to hear from him.

I've realized of late that I really like comedy. Throughout the summer, I went to a lot of musical gigs for local artists, somewhat for the radio show, but mostly just for fun since I like music and all that. However, a few happenstantial comedy outings set me seeking out more of that just before I left, which why I went to the boston comedy marathon and visited the alternative comedy sleepover to name a few. One might say the culmination was our hour long live radio chats with Dick Doherty. Anyhow, this all reminded me of just how much I like comedy. And I think I had started to forget it since coming here! Thankfully, the comedy tent was there to remind me how great it is and the interesting take on it South Africa can provide.

I also learned something interesting about South African colloquialism. I was very confused when many of the comedians kept using saying the word "cock," but they were using it as an adjective. I eventually reasoned (correctly) at that, that its an Afrikaans way of saying shitty or shit. I didn't realize till later the word is spelled "kak." In a similar vein, getting the local humor of South African people and places is rather interesting, but not too hard to pick up, thankfully. For example, it took me very little time to acquire the knowledge that Port Elizabeth is the New Jersey of South Africa.

So the comedy was great. But when that portion was done, I really did want to get back to the stage for some more music. Thieve was coming up, afterall. After listening to a song or two by them , I decided I was hungry, and needed to replenish my reserves. Fortunately the food hut was located just to the north, where I could still hear the music. I decided to buy food from the braai stand because isn't that what South Africa's all about? I'm quite hungry here; what's the most expensive item on the menu? The Braai Bag? Sure, gimme. The guy said some stuff in a think Afrikaans accent and I paid him... wait, did he say something about grilling this myself? I think I heard a laugh so he must have been joking. A minute later he handed me a bag.

Noooooope, he wasn't joking. Shit, now I have a bag full of raw but delicious looking meat through which the juices are rapidly seeping. Uhh shit shit, I could give it back I guess but that's so much trouble there's got to be some way to salvage this. Hijinx! This is exactly why I came here, baboons and hijinx! Okay, how bad could this be? The meat is cold, so I have no idea how old it was when it was put in their cooler, but its been kept cold. Okay, so if I put it in the car right now and then do my thing for a few hours and drive back, it'll be fine. Yeah! Of course it'll be good, we've done way worse stuff with meat while camping, I'll just make sure I cook it right when I get back and cook it straight to hell. Everything will be fine.

So I did just that, and I even happened to have a clean plastic bag in the car to protect the truck from getting meat juice everywhere. Excellent, the weather is even cooling down and the clouds are rolling in, so the meat wouldn't bake in the car.

Pleased with myself, I returned to the region, though I missed almost all of Thieve. Well, time to actually get some food (which turned out to be a shwarma). I wasn't really interested in Captain Stu, and I needed a stage break since the next three were gonna be the bonanza, or so I was told. I went to inspect the DJ tent.

The DJ tent was created to allow MC's and DJ's to rap and rhyme and place funky beats ranging from reggae to techno. I wanted to see what Chamber Concept was all about, since they were given the spotlight of the festival at the DJ tent. What I found was a colored and a black dude rapping while two white guy laid the beats. It wasn't bad but it wasn't anything special, either. Rap lyrics are usually beyond me, and the beats weren't very interesting, since that's hardly the focus of the music. Oh well, I can stop by later to get glimpses of what other DJ's are doing.

Fine, well I don't want either musical choice so... more comedy! It happened to be improv time right around then. They were pretty funny, what can I say? Not as funny as the straight up stand-ups, but still quality stuff. Quality enough for me to lolly about there a while longer and miss the beginning of Desmond and the Tutus.

Right, so they sound an awful lot like another Harry Potter tribute band. But they're really just a generic indie rock band. Shocking, isn't it. Still enjoyable to listen to for half an hour. I was pretty stoked for the next band, called Freshlyground. According to rumor, Freshlyground was some real fusion music where you get all parts of South African culture coming together, which is the kind of thing I really like to see, given my adoration for similar such projects like the Afro Celt Sound System.

Freshlyground was pretty excellent. It was pretty much everything I was expecting. I'm not sure what else to say since I already gave you the link to their site and music. Here look at more pictures.

Around this time the wind started to pick up and it was getting darker, so I moved further into the crowd to absorb their heat, which was a fine move. I caught this really nice scene on camera as the sun passed over the hills.

Despite being a hippie festival, I didn't see a lot of drugs out. The festival seemed to be pretty clear about not allowing illicit substances. Then again, when did that ever stop anyone? There was way more weed at the Brandeis spring weekend than I saw out here during the day. When night did fall, then I started to get a few whiffs of kush. Still, pretty weak representation. Oh also, I learned the drinking age in South African is only 18.

Okay, so the next act was completely unknown to me. However, after conversing with some random English girls for a while about the various acts etc, I heard that most people were very excited about this band, and that they'd been touring around the world, and this was one of the first times in a while they were going to play back in their home country. From looking at the shirts people were wearing, it also seemed that these guys were the main headliner of the festival.

The band's name was Just Jinjer, and I learned later that all of what I heard was true, and that these guys are the most successful South African musical act in history. So that meant the crowd was close to 10,000 strong for these guys, everyone was really intense, and the band, seeing as it was their first time back in a while, was really looking forward to it.

They opened with a sweet cover of Ramble On (in true hippie music festival style I was wearing my tie-dyed Zeppelin IV t-shirt), and then broke into their classic material. Even though I didn't know those songs, I had a pretty good time thanks to the showmanship of the band and the fervor of the audience. I also learned later that each member of the band had drummed professionally at one point in their career. Which explained the part of the show where the bassist when behind the kit, and the drummer and singer/guitarist brought out a dual snare apparatus and the three of them played this massive drumming orgy, culminating in a cowbell solo. I shit you not.

That was definitely the highlight of the evening. Everyone wanted them to play more, so there was gonna be let down afterwards. I stopped by the DJ tent and heard some of Richard the Third. He was at least not a hip-hop DJ, but his techno was a bit heavy on the unoriginal basslines. At the very end I heard some of Markus Wormstorm, who I enjoyed quite a bit. But he's a real DJ, since he has a bloody wikipedia page. I would have liked to have stayed for more of the dancing, since it went way late into the night when the bands had stopped, but at that time it hadn't really picked up yet and I really needed rest and meat and not to be driving back at 3AM.

So I drove back. The car I use for such excursions is without radio, which sucks once the novelty of driving in Africa wears off and it just becomes annoying. Driving on the left side of the road seems really uncomfortable at first, but its really not so bad. The bad part is the signs and the lack of lighting. The South African versions of Interstates can be these two lane highways with no lights. Or even the four and six lane highways have these sections where suddenly POOF no lights. The exit for my house, for example is just such a stretch.

When I started driving here and my supervisor was observing me learn the roads and the car, she told me that the left side driving is not so bad, but one must be careful because there will be moments when you're tired or distracted, and you take the action of a natural right side driver. I made it back to that stretch and off the exit safely. Had just a few blocks to go. Then I did it. I took an easy right from the one way exit into the wrong lane.

Thing is, it would have been fine if I could have seen the oncoming lights, and just shifted over a lane. But, there was a fucking divider between the lanes, preventing such an action. I hate dividers. Always have. So I turn on my emergency flashers and go real slow past these cars who flash their lights and honk timidly at me. And once I get past the damn divider I pull into my right lane for like 20 feet and then take my last turn into the safety of my neighborhood. Then I go to the house, and pull out my meat.

We're bad South Africans because we don't own a BBQ. I must admit that having a BBQ in use all the time while growing up was a nice deal. However, MIT weaned me away from such luxuries effectively enough. And it taught me a little creativity, I like to think. So, I turned the over on broil tossed the meat in a pat and let 'em roast.

I had to keep an eye on it all, and thankfully the meats came with turning sticks, but in a little time, by braai was complete. I meant to take a picture of the final spectacle, but sadly, I forgot because I was too hungry. I only remembered after I had devoured my feast. All in all, 50 rand well spent.

My duties complete, I tossed my belongings on the table, showered, set the security and alarm, and went to sleep.

Day 2

I awoke around 8:30 to find myself not-dead from eating the braai the previous night. There went my excuse for skipping out on the final day of the festival. I'd have bought a Saturday only pass, but that wasn't an option. Intent on getting my money's worth, I went back out Sunday morning for more because why not. There were a number of bands I was definitely looking forward to, and I was psyched about more comedy.

The drive was getting pretty dull by this point. I observed more shanty town instances this time, though. I arrived a little after 11, and caught the second half of the Simon Van Gend Band, which was okay. Indie folk rock sung by a guy who sounds pretty much the same as Colin Melloy. Son of a Thousand Blues was the next act up. I enjoyed these guys a lot. They were another mixed race band, and the black guy singing was really good on stage and had a damn fine voice. Also, their guitarist (who I think might have been French) was pretty good too. Midway through the set, they played this awesome 10 minute cover of Whole Lotta Love. It was a nice, full sound. They're on Universal's label, so they might be going places.

340mL had been recommended to me, but there was more Best of Fest in the comedy tent, so I went over there for an hour. I also caught the end of the unplugged comedy sessions (think Flight of the Conchords) which were pretty alright. The Best of Fest roundup turned out to be a few of the same people with a splash of new blood. Problem was, all of them were running out of material. When van Vuuren came on, he was still funny, but he admitted to having very few jokes left (though he managed to make plenty up based on that premise). So... it wasn't as good, but it was still pretty funny. So when I actually heard a joke repeated from previously, I left and found the last band starting.

The closers, Bed on Bricks were a punk, reggae, blues, funk, and rock fusion band? So they played music. The lead singer busted out a saxophone every now and then. Much like the comedians, I'm running out of things to say because I'm tired now and I was more tired by the time they came on. But they played a neat set, and since they were very last, the organizers even let them have an encore.

I wanted to leave as soon as that was done, however. There was more raving in DJ tend till 6 o'clock or something, and it sounded alright, but there was no way I or anyone else had proper energy for that. It was time to leave.

The drive back was mostly uneventful as always, except for the increase in traffic due to people leaving the festival. Nothing too slow. However, the skies grew dark near Cape Town, and eventually opened up on the highway, unleashing torrents of hail. The clouds were think above me, but over the bay to the west, the sun lit up the stormy countryside. It was quite a sight, blinding but impressive. I would have taken a camera except for the extreme and idiotic danger that would have entailed.

And I made it back unscathed. Plus the car had been washed of all the dirt it had accumulated from being in the field for two weeks. But, I needed to refill the tank, and that wasn't such a pleasant experience for my wallet (350 bloody rand).

So, in retrospect, it was a pretty excellent time. Well worth the money and time investment. I got all kinds of tips on bands and music to listen to. If you're a listener of the WMBR radio show Droppin' Knowledge, you'll likely here some of these bands on the airwaves. The comedy was great, and I now possess knowledge of who and where I can find good shows in Cape Town. I definitely want to see van Vuuren again.

The configuration of three venues, one for music, one for comedy, and one for dancing, was rather brilliant, in my opinion. Maybe, I'm just lucky to be attracted to all three of these forms of entertainment. However, I've not seen other places put such a strong emphasis on the stuff that wasn't the big music on the main stage. The smaller festival size may have this balance possible. All I know is that it worked.

The people? Yeah, mostly white English people. A lot of hippies, but the music was mainstream enough to attract others. I met a surprising number of Americans. I'm amazed how many of them hail from the Boston area. A lot of couples were here, but a pretty young crowd overall. The comedy folks were more mature, but the vast majority of people were in their 20's or younger.

Thus ended my first significant foray into the world of the South African music scene. Daisies, as I've been told, is pretty representative... though it doesn't explain what the other black 3/4's of the population listens to. Figuring that one out is going to be a bit more of a challenge... and if I wanted to do it right, probably quite dangerous.

In conclusion, the reason this is part I is because part II will arrive in December when The Killers come to play in a different field at different wine estate outside of Cape Town. Voerspoort!