Posts

On the passing of Ta Blaqs

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This was originally written in November of 2022, only published November 2024.  Zami Mdingi, mentioned in the story, passed away in April of 2024.  On the morning of Tuesday the 1st of November 2022, I got a call from a number I didn’t recognise. It was Sheila Tempi.  Oh hey Sheila, howsit, where are you calling from on this new number? I’m at the Guguletu hospital she told me, distraught. Blacki has just passed away.  That morning Blacki was scheduled to be at the hospital, but not for himself. He was taking fellow musician Tete Mbambisa for surgery on his eyes. Instead, it was Blacki at Guguletu Hospital, after a heart attack at home.  Blacki and Sheila and I had been talking the day before, planning a Jazz dinner at their home for a group of 30 guests later in November. It would have been the biggest gig at their home since the Covid 19 pandemic had begun, and the beginning of a return to a consistent schedule of Jazz Safaris and Cuisine Safaris at Blacki and Sheila’s Guguletu home.
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Radio movies and radio shows

  My radio sessions all in one place. Also accessible at https://www.mixcloud.com/oneiain/
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OneFM Episode 2 - 16 Tons

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  Early 2021 I was determined that I would produce one podcast a month for a year... A year later and here comes episode 2, titled "16 Tons".  16 Tons starts in the year 2000 in Sao Paolo, Brazil, with a band called Funk Como Le Gusta performing a cover of a hit Brazilian samba called 16 Toneladas, and travels back in time through the unlikely evolution of a song about Kentucky coal miners that became one of the greatest selling singles of all time .  At the time of publishing episode 2 I have already started on episode 3, and, God willing, it will not take a year to finish. The working title of episode 3 is "Songs that TikTok Taught Me". 
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Taxi Alibama. An audio movie

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Back in 2005 I was a producer on the Cape Africa Platform, a large-scale art event in Cape Town. I curated a festival of concerts across the breadth of the city, with a shuttle system connecting these events so that festival goers could move seamlessly between shows, and experience Cape Town in a totally new way.  The event never happened as the funding from the Lotto never arrived.  The event was scaled back dramatically to a beautiful once-off concert.  To commemorate the event that never happened, I created an audio movie that gave a sense of the journey we had envisaged. It was called Taxi Alibama, and it was a ride through Cape Town in a mini-bus, connecting different musics and artists and voices in the city. I rode taxis all over the city, and recorded ambient sound to be used as the context that connected the music. The tracks featured were all recorded by me in my work as a music producer. It is a collection of some of my favourite music ever. Enjoy the ride!
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My video portfolio

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I studied film-making in 1994 at the Cape Town Film and TV School. I had a great time, and loved the film learning, but the school wasn't the right place for me.  In 1995 I started at UCT majoring in English and Drama, joined UCT Radio, did film courses and continued making films. My first project was with Akin Omotoso, assisting with his first film project together with Kurt Isaacs. Over the years I continued to make my own short films and radio programmes.  On this page visitors will find highlights from a wide selection of the inserts I've produced over the years. My skills include camera, sound, editing, directing, producing.   For the full portfolio please visit: https://www.youtube.com/user/mycapetown021/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/Coffeebeansroutes/videos https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLERmPgay_a4T2c22kNW0tCinlIo3N8AX4  
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OneFM episode 1

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  About a 100 years ago, as a university student, I was fortunate to be one of the first DJs to broadcast legally when UCT radio got its broadcast licence. This was in 1995.  ICASA, the regulatory authority, had just opened up the airwaves, and our little campus station, which had been a pirate station, became legit. I had a late night show, and got to do pretty much what I wanted. Like play 30 seconds of dead air as the 1995 remix of Simon and Garfunkel's Sound of Silence. Ha ha ha.  I had planned to become a commercial radio DJ, stars in my eyes, wads of cash on the horizon. But I quickly realised that the future of radio would be playlists without droning egotistical DJs like myself, and listeners being able to listen to whatever they wanted whenever they wanted without the big record labels and the DJs telling them what to listen to. I got bored. I tried my hand at talk radio but wasn't mature enough, or secure enough in my own understanding of the world to make
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Moving the Centre - Travel Africa Magazine feature on Cape Town

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Written by me for Travel Africa Magazine, published June 2019. The official link for the piece is dead, and so I’m posting images of each page. Readers may have to zoom in a little to read properly. Apologies for that. In brief, the piece seeks to show how Cape Town (pre COVID-19!) had been moving the centre: that is, mainstreaming the so-called periphery.
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