Grahamstown!

For the past week I have had the pleasure of residing in Grahamstown, South Africa!  This is the home of Rhodes University, a prestigious school of about 7,000 students.  The International Library of African Music is based out of the Humanities department of Rhodes, but it is in its own building.  This is where I’ve been working each morning for the past week. 

Diane speaking to some guests at ILAM

Professor Diane Thram (she insists I call her Diane) and I have been doing all kinds of things this week preparing for our trip to Tanzania and then Kenya.  Among these, we’ve been packing equipment, packing ILAM merchandise, and reviewing field notes and recordings from both Tanzania and Kenya that are dated from 1950!  Super cool!  They are some of the only recordings that exist of these traditions and people groups, done by Hugh Tracey- the original ethnomusicology rockstar.  The recordings are of surprisingly good quality, and I’ve been really enjoying talking to different people at ILAM about Hugh Tracey’s recording practices.  He played no games with his recordings!  They would run immense lengths of cable just to park the generator as far away as possible so it did not bleed into the recording.  He also had a team of experts that would operate the recording equipment in a nearby truck while he personally held the microphone.  What a boss!

Elijah giving a tour of the studio

Meanwhile, ILAM has an impressive recording studio, in which they have state of the art equipment with which they have digitized all of Hugh Tracey’s work!  Whoa!  They are one of the only archives in the world to have such a wealth of information that is pioneer, incredible quality, and ALL digitized.  It is staggering.  The guy in charge of the studio is Elijah Madiba, and he is the MAN.  We’ve spent a lot of time together this week.  He is the brains behind any technical stuff at ILAM- aka I would love to BE him.  I’ve been picking his brain on gear, music, Grahamstown, and just the universe in general. 

SA Drummer, Louis Moholo-Moholo performs.  On the right
was a jazz cellist playing a 5 string cello!

The National Arts Festival has also been going on all week in G-town.  For those of you from Jacksonville, imagine a city that is about a 20^th of the size of Jax having a festival that is twice the size of OneSpark.  It feels a lot like OneSpark, but it also brings in lots of international acts.  I’ve been to art galleries, plays, traditional dance performances, string quartets, pianists, and lots of South African Jazz!  I saw Maria Schneider Big Band (Grammy Award winning AMERICAN big band composer) for less than $10.  Definitely would never get to do that in the states.  They also have a massive Village Green filled with tents and vendors.  It was such a cool experience! 

The main building of Rhodes University

Grahamstown in general is a very beautiful city.  It was settled in 1820, and many of its buildings are reminiscent of English colonialism.  Interestingly, some areas of it look a lot like New Orleans, LA.  Instead of having tall dorm buildings, Rhodes has beautiful small “Rez”s that all look historic.  I’ve been told there are more than 50 Rez halls.  I’ve been staying in one called the Salisbury House that used to be part of an old school for nuns!   The dining hall in which I eat breakfast is called Allen Webb Hall, and it looks like it is out of Hogwarts.  The Rhodes Chapel is also right next to my Rez and is all brick inside with a breath-taking painting that was done by a nun above the stage.  I love it so much!

An exhibition of "hand-spring" puppets.  Two guys stand
inside the horse to manipulate it.

Just some random street at Rhodes.

Salisbury House!

Allen Webb Hall, my Rez's dining hall

Inside the Rhodes Chapel

A parade on High St for the festival.  

There are plenty of great places to eat or get good coffee.  Just off of campus there were two major streets full of cool local places- High Street and New Street.  At the top of the hill outside of town there is The Monument, which is both beautiful and a vibrant hub of the festival.  Downtown there was the incredible St. Michael’s Cathedral, which was so picturesque that I think I snapped it every time I passed.  The Jazz Hub was a little ways northwest and it looked like a residential area in Boston.  Despite the cold weather and my sickness, I walked far and wide across this town!

Town Hall is the building on the left, with lots
of vendors out front.

I also met lots of cool people!  In order to unlock the front doors at the Rezes, students must use their fingerprint- kind of cool to see a fingerprint scanner on some of these historic doors!  Well since there are so many guests in the Rezes, some students were employed to stay over their winter break to just be doormen.   There are three at my Rez, and my favorite is a girl named Tando.  She is going into her fourth year at Rhodes as a triple major in Industrial Sociology, Industrial Psychology, and Anthropology!  And I thought I was cool!  I also met a photographer for a local paper, multiple vendors from the Green, and countless other nice strangers!  I spent a lot of time exploring with Zach and Jocelyn (couple from Seattle), and also got to have dinner with Mandy Carver and her husband Christian.  She presented at the conference in East London about her grade-school text book/curriculum to help teachers instruct about African traditional music, and her husband runs African Musical Instruments.  One of my favorite people I got to spend time with is Andrew Tracey, the son of Hugh Tracey- the man that created ILAM.  Andrew is recently retired, but still very active with ILAM and is a joy to be around.  Such and honor to have met this figure in history!

Left to Right: Dave Dargie (UFH),
Diane Thram (ILAM), Christian Carver (AMI),
Andrew Tracey

I know this post is long, but Grahamstown has been good to me and I will miss it so much!  Today we drive to Port Elizabeth, fly through Johannesburg, and then arrive next day in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania!  It’s hard to say goodbye to South Africa so soon, but hopefully it won’t be for good!

St Michael's Cathedral.