Art for Art's Sake

I have been in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape for the past three days, having arrived along with many enthusiastic fans into the airport in Port Elizabeth to the sounds and sights of enthusiastic South African hosts playing and singing and of course, blowing vuvuzelas. I rented a car at the airport to drive the 2 hours to Grahamstown, where another world wide event was concluding, which is the annual National Arts Festival. It is advertised as the second largest in the world, second to the Edinburgh festival. I was challenged by driving the rental car out of the airport and through Port Elizabeth, since the steering wheel is on the right and the driving path is on the left of the road. The surrounding neighborhood looked much like the Hillandale subdivision where I grew up in Kentucky, but something was different....oh yeah, it was the donkeys. The view of the Indian Ocean beyond Port Elizabeth was breathtaking and I tried hard to concentrate on driving while simultaneously enjoying the ocean alongside the highway.

This part of the country was the home of many famous South Africans, including the activist Steve Biko, Enoch Sontanga, composer of Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika - the national anthem, President Nelson Mandela, and all the British settlers who came here in 1820 changing history forever. As part of the renaming scheme across all of South Africa, this area will now be called Nelson Mandela Bay.

Rhodes University is the main festival site, and the entire town stages plays, concerts and art exhibits during the festival. Today was the final day of the festival, where the multitude of tents and food vendors reminded me of Jazz Fest in New Orlean. I bought some small coffee cups for Dennis for my visual art fix and I spent this morning at the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. George where the mass was set to marimba and steel drum music. The mass was part of a celebration paralell to the festival called "Spiritfest". We sang familiar hymns in English and less familiar (to me) choruses in isiXhosa, the language of the black South Africans in this region. It is similiar to isiZulu, though the basic "hello" is a different word and the related conversational words are slight variations.

I am working in the archives of the International Library of African Music at Rhodes University. The ILAM is a unique library of traditional music of South Africa and houses dissertations that are nearly impossible to access on topics of interest in my Freedom Songs project. The Kipman family from whom I'm renting housing are a family of Rhodes scholars and have provided a great perspective on the local scene as well as fabulous hospitality. I have a nice cottage with my own television and kitchen, set in a beautiful neighborhood near campus. The town is a little like Boone, only flatter and more international. The ever present donkeys downtown have continued to remind me that I am not in Kansas, and we are all pretty excited around here that the looming threat of a blackout due to striking power company workers seems to have been resolved.