Pan African Space Station set to launch in Cape Town

The Pan African Space Station (PASS) a 30-day music intervention on radio, via the internet, as well as at venues across greater Cape Town, will run from September 12 to October 12, 2008.

It is an initiative of the Cape Town based curatorial team unknown as the Heliocentrics (Neo Muyanga and Ntone Edjabe), in partnership with the Africa Centre and with the support of Spier, the Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council, IFAS, the French Embassy and the NAC.

The PASS will encourage Capetonians and visitors to engage with the rich and complex web of creative expression that binds Africans across entangled nations and across the globe. It is an intervention into the spatial and cultural ghettos in the city, aiming to link them physically (through the music venues) and conceptually (on radio and the internet).

From 1st to 4th October, the PASS will play host to genre-busting music outfits from global Africa dedicated to exploring new musical territory. Participating artists include the Lagos-Accra based Afrobeat fanfare Ayetoro; famed drummer Cindy Blackman and her quartet (New York); Trinidadian jazz-poet Anthony Joseph and his Spasm band; Electronica-jazz group Bibi Tanga and Professeur Inlassable (Bangui/Paris); Kinshasa Underground’s poet laureate Bebson de la rue and his band Tryonix; Luanda’s leading techno producer DJ Manya; Bass player Carlo Mombelli and his Prisoners of Strange (Jhb), Joburg’s art-rockers Blk Jks, Afrofuturist bluesman Madala Kunene (Durban), two Cape Town based collaborative projects, namely Goematronics and the all-female electro project Science Feline and more.

The music happenings are arranged to occur at staggered times and space intervals both to affirm and disrupt the music geography of the city. Transport will be provided via a temporary network of buses facilitating greater mobility in our notoriously rigid cultural environment. Venues will include Langa’s Guga S’thebe, the Assembly in District Six, Mowbray’s Town Hall, the Kimberley Hotel in the eastern part of the city and the Slave Church on Long Street.

A key act of the PASS will be the radio station that is conceived as the ideal Pan African music performer and will display all the characteristics of the event. Subject to licensing approval by ICASA, the 30-day radio station will present cutting edge and progressive music from global Africa, and act as a meeting place for the diverse music audiences in the city. DJs and hosts will be recruited from all of Cape Town music communities and abroad.

The PASS will be launched on September 12, 2008 and will assume the form of a 24-hour performance titled Songs for Biko and other stomps screams and prayers and will include a marathon reading of Biko’s I Write What I Like.

A PASS programme, designed by poet Karen Press and architect Greer Valley, takes the form of a re-mapping of Cape Town, and will illustrate the various venues and the routes and concepts that link them. Programmes will be available from the Pan African Market in Long Street and Computicket outlets. For further information visit www.panafricanspacestation.org.za