Lekopanye Mooketsi
29 October 2008
Street Horn jazz promotion company is organising a show dubbed Africa Jazz Tour 2008 at the beginning of next month.
According to Soares Katumbela of Street Horn Promotions, the festival will feature local artistes Banjo Mosele, Malombo Mmereki, Malefo "Stampore" Mokha and South African jazz singer Sonti Mndebele. All the artistes will be launching their new albums.
The tour will kick off with a show at Thapama Lodge in Francistown on Saturday. The next gig will take them to Khudu ya Mowana jazz garden in Mahalapye the following day.
The Gaborone show will be held on November 7 and the closing concert at the Molapowabojang Recreational Park the next day.
Sonti might not be well known in the country but she first settled here in 1976 as a refugee following the outbreak of students June 16 riots in the apartheid South Africa. Black students were protesting against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in schools.
As an asylum-seeker, she was warmly received by fellow South African exiles in Botswana. Sonti realised that this was the norm as that same warmth was radiated through the hands of Batswana as a people.
The early 80s was a period in which musicians like Mosele, John Selolwane and Bully Tsienyane made contact with South African musicians in exile such as Hugh Masekela, Jonas Gwangwa and Sonti. They lined up together and during live sessions on the outskirts of Gaborone and through these rich and diverse musical exchanges, Mosele and Sonti's careers were transformed.
They all moved to London and settled there and continued working with Masekela until the Paul Simon tour when Sonti and Selolwane were invited to accompany him.
Katumbela said the solo careers of Mosele and Sonti developed separately in Norway and the United Kingdom (UK) respectively.
"But the experiences and heritage they shared during that extraordinary period in Botswana in the early 80s created an enduring collaboration between Banjo and Sonti, which will now return to the place where it all began....the beautiful country and people of Botswana."
Sonti has described her as a music multi-talented professional African jazz singer, songwriter, arranger and a dancer who also coaches music workshops for children.
She relocated to London to team up with the cast of Ipi Tombi and forged a collaboration with Miriam Makeba and Masekela that was to last for 10 years. During that period, she made appearances around the world with artistes as diverse as Peter Gabriel, George Michael, Sting, Sade, Boy George, Lionel Ritchie and Chaka Khan.
The experiences that Sonti gained through these performances secured her a place on Simon's Graceland tour, singing to audiences around the globe. Venues at which Sonti has performed include the Wembley Arena,in London The Apollo Theatre in New York.
The Norwegian-based Mosele does not need any introductions in his home country. However, for the uninitiated, he is a guitarist, singer and composer who was born in Kanye.
He is a founder member of Kalahari band, a group that backed Masekela in the early 80s. Mosele has played the guitar in three of Masekela's albums namely Technobush, Waiting for the rain and Tomorrow. He had also toured the world with the South African legend.
Mosele also worked as a session musician with the likes of Gwangwa, Gabriel, Julian Bahula, the late Bheki Mseleku and Barney Rachabane on the London music circuit.
He moved to Oslo, Norway, in the 90s and worked with some great jazz musicians such as Ole Hamre, Olav Dale, Harald Dahlstrom and Gambian kora master Anjali Jorbateh.
He recorded his first solo album, Badisa, in 2003 which was followed by another release, Movin on in 2005. He has just released his latest album, Nowadays in which he collaborated with local artistes.
As for Mmereki, he is an innovative and result-oriented musician. Mmereki is also a vocalist with a proven track record of academic excellence. He boasts of a wide experience in music arranging, composition, music education and instrumentalist.
Between 1981 and 2004, Mmereki was the leader and front man of the Botswana Defence Force (BDF) dance band. Under his command, the band released two albums, "Mpho ya Modimo" and "I'll keep searching for music".
He has also played for some defunct old groups like Scarers, Imagine and the Breakers. He was a vocalist and keyboard player for the bands.
Mmereki has recently released his debut album as a solo artiste. The album is entitled Ga ke robale.
The Molepolole based Stampore is a folklore singer of great repute. Stampore has also released his latest album this year. He has collaborated with Mosele on a number of music projects. Stampore is one of the local musicians that Mosele holds in high esteem.
Always clad in his stapora cap, Stampore is a marvel to watch when he is rendering Ga modimo o ka nthusa bogolog ka e bona ka matlho.
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