The Spier Summer Arts Poetry Festival

The Spier Estate will be home once again to a myriad of poets and musical directors performing on the estate, each captivating audiences with their different artistic styles...

Under the expert curatorship of Antjie Krog, this unique mix of artists comes together to present a progamme that is cutting-edge and challenging.

The uniqueness of this Festival is the appearance of two top-class musical directors at the same venue. Brett Bailey and Rocco de Villiers.

Brett Bailey directs a production called White Chocolate which is a lush musical collaboration between Third World Bunfight (resident performance troupe at Spier) and Congolese singer and composer Bebe Lueki's band, Akuna Matata. The show features traditional and comtemporary Xhosa songs as well as songs written in Lingala and French. Bailey has directed Big Dada, iMumbo Jumbo, Ipi Zombi and Orfeus, many of which have toured abroad.

Rocco de Villiers, pianist, composer and producer has released six solo albums, two cocktail books, a wine range and several clothing items under his label RoccoRocco. He has worked as musical director on 72 stage productions, wrote the music for nine television series, produced eighteen CD's for various artists and two series and documentaries for M-Net. He composed, directs and conceptualized Ballades which is the poetry of N.P. van Wyk Louw and B.W. Vilikazi and features the talents of Antoinette Kellerman and Motlatji Ditodi. It explores the ballades of the two poets working during the same period of our history, but separated by harsh Apartheid legislature. The show is a stage production using a rock band interspersed with poetry by the two poets.

Come and listen to Kgafela oa Magogodi, who is known as the bastard son of ‘combat literature', and is an outspoken poet who started writing in his teens in the Eighties. He drew heavily on his grandfather's Setswana influence and the first wave of rap that hit the shores of South Africa. "Reading...listening to Kgafela oa Magogodi's poetry and song is a shattering experience. His linguistic chisels go far beyond ‘causing blisters in the eardrums of society.' They are like a shattered mirror, with each piece of glass throwing at you a reflection, an image of its own." (Phaswane Mpe, 2000)

Jitsvinger will transport you, with his unique rap style, to the streets of Mitchell's Plain in Cape Town where these ‘park jams' are hip-hop events organized on open fields around various Cape communities and are usually done as fundraisers for school projects. An electric live performer and collaborator, Jitsvinger has participated on an inter continental hip hop album called ‘Rogue State of Mind' which features collaborations between artists from Cape Town and Switzerland in English, Afrikaans, French and Swiss German.

Samm Farai Monro from Zimbabwe is better known as Comrade Fatso and is one of the most popular poets in the Zimbabwean arts scene. He spent most of his youth there and inspired by life and the struggle for justice. He calls his poetry Toyi Toyi poetry, Urban street poetry that mixes Shona with English, mbira with hip hop, poetry with the struggle to survive. He is both a poet and a political activist.

Harry Garuba, originally from Nigeria, is an Associate Professor of English and African Studies at the University of Cape Town. He is an academic, poet and an editor of poetry. He was awarded a doctorate degree at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria for his pioneering comparative study of African, Caribbean and African American drama.

Also in the line-up is Charl Pierre Naude, David Ferguson, Zanne Stapelberg, Ingrid de Kok, Gabeba Baderoon, Catherine Kidd and many more.

The Spier Summer Arts Poetry Festival
Where: Spier Estate
When: 19h30, 2nd & 3rd February 2007
Tickets: R100
More Info: 021 809 1111


Molo says: "Spier has a variety of events running during the Spier Arts Summer Season. Find out more about Spier's production of Cargo; Spier's take on Shakespeare's Macbeth; and the satircal production on everyone's lips, Evita for President!

Find out about more things to do at Spier; Capetownmagazine.com informs you of the range of exciting experiences on offer at this idyllic wine estate just outside Cape Town."