Category Archives: Events
Sonic Alignments 1: Cape Town jazz & kawina
From Leonor González Mina and Sathima Bea Benjamin to Ronald Snijders, Toumani Diabaté and Aziza Brahim to Peter Tosh… The idea for Sonic Alignments sparked between self-made playlists, the pages of theater scripts, telephone conversations, memories of concerts and tables with food… many tables with very good food. This first edition will be about Cape Town jazz and kawina.
Date, location: Thu. March 6, Bijlmer Parktheater (Amsterdam)
Speakers: Denise Jannah, Dylan Valley (Cape Town), Grant Jurius (Cape Town), Marlon ‘MrJetFly’ Francis and Wayne Modest.
Program schedule
19.00h-20.10h: Part 1, a conversation with Denise Jannah, Dylan Valley, Grant Jurius and MrJetFly.
20.10h-20.40h: Break, including iftar. At Bijlmer Parktheater, we’re offering spaces to do wudu and pray.
20.40h-21.45h: Part 2, listening session with Dylan Valley, Grant Jurius and Wayne Modest.
Location: Bijlmer Parktheater (address: Anton de Komplein 240, Amsterdam).
Tickets: Please use this link to buy your tickets in our pre-sale. Buying your tickets in advance gives our teams and the chefs who’ll make food for iftar enough time to prepare.
Sonic Alignments is a collaboration between Wereldmuseum Amsterdam, Research Center For Material Culture and BPTUnpacks, a Bijlmer Parktheater label. In this series, DJs, musicians and vocalists discuss the sonic works that form the soundtracks to their senses of belonging. During the first edition on Thursday, March 6 in Bijlmer Parktheater’s theatre hall, we’ll listen to the sonic conversations between South African jazz and kawina, traditional music from Suriname.
The first hour of the program consists of presentations on the histories and similarities between South African jazz and kawina. After a break where we’ll provide iftar and spaces to pray, Dylan Valley and Grant Jurius will host a listening session. During this session we’ll closely listen to the jazz songs discussed in the first part of the program. Wayne Modest will give his reflections on the work.
About the speakers
Denise Jannah , Singer, vocal coach, actor and jazz icon.
Dylan Valley , film maker, lecturer at the University of Cape Town and part of Future Nostalgia.
Grant Jurius , visual artist and part of Future Nostalgia.
Marlon ‘MrJetFly’ Francis , musician, producer and co-founder of both Future Kawina and 4TheCulture.
Initiators
– Carine Zaayman: Artist, curator, scholar whose work focuses on the afterlives of slavery and colonialism, particularly in the Cape.
– Wayne Modest: Director of Content of Wereldmuseum.
– and yours truly.
The illustration above was made by Grant Jurius. Jurius also made the illustrations for the Anton de Kom Vandaag program + the GembertheeSessies with Romana Vrede and Shehera Grot.
Matter of Place – Thomas J Price at Kunsthal (Rdam)
Awe-mazing curator Shehera Grot blesses Rotterdam’s Kunsthal and us all with another marvelous exhibition: Matter of Place, Thomas J Price’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. Matter of Place opened yesterday and it’s gorgeous.
Tomorrow morning (Sunday Oct. 6, 11:00h) I have the honour to be in conversation with Thomas J Price. The Artist Talk takes place in Kunsthal’s auditorium and there are still tickets left.
More info about tomorrow’s program can be found on Kunsthal’s program page.
Yesterday’s press preview and opening left my heart so full that I still haven’t found all the words I’d like to share. But, I’ll absolutely write more about Matter of Place, Shehera Grot and Thomas J Price soon.
Picture borrowed from Clarice Gargard.
GembertheeSessies and BPTUnpacks: The Color Purple – upcoming events
For February and March I’m organizing and hosting three events at Bijlmer Parktheater:
1. BPTUnpacks The Color Purple (Fri. February 23), a gathering centering Alice Walker’s legendary novel and its two film adaptations. Panelists: Romana Vrede (pictured here), Shirley Ahura, Ayra Kip and Simone Lagrand.
2. GembertheeSessies with Adrian Van Wyk (Thu. February 29), which will be a ginger spices conversation about film and the tracks of these imagined subway lines between Cape Town and Bijlmer.
3. GembertheeSessies with Kelechi Okafor (Sat. March 30), a sisterly reunion in celebration of Okafor’s debut collection of short stories ‘Edge of Here’.
Both GembertheeSessies are in collaboration with my favourite spot to drink ginger tea: poetry and cocktailbar Labyrinth. For all three events the lovely Bijlmer Bookstore will be present with a pop-up store. Below, you’ll find more info about each programs:
Friday February 23: BPTUnpacks The Color Purple
It’s been a while since our former Bijlmer Parktheater-colleague Saundra Williams organized one of our legendary programs: Black Magic Woman. It is in the spirit of that memory and with a longing for that vibe that program maker Simone Zeefuik would like to discuss a classic: The Color Purple. On Friday February 23 our downstairs studio will transformed into a cozy living room where we’ll discuss Alice Walker’s novels and its two film adaptations.
For a proper unpacking of this film -its main themes, the cinematography, the soundtrack and the ways in which both films are in conversation with each other- Zeefuik will be joined by four panelists:
– Shirley Ahura (London),
– Romana Vrede (Rotterdam),
– Simone Lagrand (Paris) and
– Ayra Kip (Amsterdam, Bijlmer-raised). It will be an evening full of Shug & Celie, quotes, memes and quiz questions. The winner of our ‘Blues women in film’ quiz will stroll out the door with a prize package put together by our panel.
Tickets for BPTUnpacks: The Color Purple can be bought via this page on the Bijlmer Parktheater-website.
Thursday February 29: GembertheeSessies with Adrian Van Wyk (Kaapstad/Cape Town)
For this year’s first edition of the GembertheeSessies (GingerteSessions) we’re connecting Bijlmer to Cape Town. We’ll do this through the works and research of writer, director, producer, curator and cultural worker Adrian Van Wyk. Simone Zeefuik interviews Adrian about his creative processes and his current research projects through which he links decolonial activism in the Netherlands and South Africa. The session opens with the screening of the short documentary What The Soil Remembers. Van Wyk is the producer and researcher of this short film directed by José Cardoso.
Adrian Van Wyk is a filmmaker/creative producer and cultural historian from Cape Town, South Africa. He completed a MA in History at Stellenbosch University. His dissertation, titled “From Jamaica to the Cape Flats: Reflecting on the manifestations of a Cape Town Hip Hop Culture”, unpacked the diasporic movements of Hip Hop culture onto the Cape Flats. In 2023, a documentary short film that Adrian produced and researched titled What the Soil Remembers enjoyed its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) where it was also awarded the Ammodo Tiger Short Award.
Tickets for the GembertheeSessies with Adrian Van Wyk can be bought via this page on the Bijlmer Parktheater-website.
Saturday March 30: GembertheeSessies with Kelechi Okafor
The awe-mazing, London based Kelechi Okafor will talk about her stunning debut collection of short stories: Edge of Here. With her book Okafor combines the ancient and the ultramodern to explore tales of contemporary Black womanhood, asking questions about the way we live now and offering a glimpse into our near future.
For her bio this Marvel from London writes: “Ke-leh-chee. That is how my name is pronounced. Now that is out of the way, hello! I am Kelechi Okafor and I’m a lover of words. I act, I direct and I write. I tweet and I dissect bits about society one podcast episode at a time. When I am not doing all of the above, I teach pole dance and twerk at my studio Kelechnekoff Fitness in Peckham. Society teaches us that we must fall into categories somehow. All I know is that I’m just a Baby Girl.”
Tickets for the GembertheeSessies with Kelechi Okafor can be bought via this page on the Bijlmer Parktheater-website.
Both GembertheeSessies are in collaboration with our beloved, much needed Bijlmer Bookstore and my favourite spot to drink ginger tea: poetry and cocktailbar Labyrinth. For all three events the Bijlmer Bookstore will be present with a pop-up store.
laZeefuik 
You must be logged in to post a comment.