Music Blog By Helewise Arends

New Year is celebrated according to the Georgian calendar on January 1st. It is the one occasion when the unique union of present, past and future takes place. A very old tradition of ‘first footing’ is practiced very seriously in Europe. At the stroke of midnight, a male stranger must be the 1st person to […]

Christmas is the annual feast commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ. 25th December was not celebrated as the birthday of Christ until AD 440. For Christians, it is not just a single day (Dec. 25), but an extended liturgical season of joy and celebration, involving many different symbols and traditions, special music and activities. CHRISTMAS […]

Christmas is the most celebrated holiday around the world. It is filled with many different secular & religious traditions and customs. SWEDEN – most people in Scandinavian countries honour St. Lucia (aka St. Lucy) each year on December 13. It began in Sweden , but spread to Denmark & Finland in the 19th Century. This […]

World AIDS DAY, celebrated on the 1st of December, was established in 1988 by the World Health Organisation and aims to raise awareness about the AIDS epidemic. It is a chance to remind ourselves of how the world changed by a retrovirus that transcribes itself into human DNA, making it impossible to eradicate after infection. […]

The 16 days of Activism of Non-violence Against Women And Children / Gender-based Violence Campaign starts on November 25 , the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women until December 10, Human Rights Day. It is an international campaign to focus global attention on the scourge of violence against women, including child and […]

The American holiday of THANKSGIVING traces its roots all the way back to 1621, when colonists held a harvest feast with the pilgrims – Dutch settlers of the Plymouth Colony (what is now called Massachusetts). In 1861 Abraham Lincoln declared it an official Thanksgiving Day, which is celebrated on the 4th Thursday of each November […]

Kwaito is a music genre that emerged in Johannesburg, South Africa, during the 1990s. Its defining qualities include the slow down, quite prominent drum & bass beat (similar to house music) as well as the spoken vocal melodies. It has, at times, been easily dismissed as the answer to American Hip-Hop. Kwaito is derived from […]

MOVEMBER (the month formerly known as November) is here and it’s time to grow a moustache to help raise funds & Awareness for Men’s Health and prostate cancer in particular. The idea for MOvember was sparked in 2003 over a few beers in Melbourne, Australia. The guys behind it joked about 80s fashion and decided […]

Jazz is one of the most profound musical languages to come out of this country and is said to be the classical music of the 20th century. South African Jazz music is traced through a series of musical developments or rays – which is a build-up of a collective expression that marks a cycle or […]

Our journey this week takes us to the world of “LANGARM” which, since its inception, has formed a big part of the so-called Coloured communities of the Cape. No matter the injustices and inequalities that was inflicted by Apartheid, the excitement, fun and freedom that musical expression allowed could never be taken away and of […]