FILM:THE RISING SON OF THE SOIL

                                                   The South African London - UK   

                                          
                                
 Like the sun,Lebogang Rasethaba`s film career is rising fast in the East.In the second of a series of three profiles of young South African artists making waves with their art internationally,Daluxolo Moloantoa chops it up,without the chopsticks,with the Beijing-based film producer.

There is a scene in the film Metro by Lebogang Rasethaba where he is walking along a busy Beijing street, on the run from crooked cops who are out to extort some money from him, and he is speaking fluent Mandarin into a cellphone. Put aside the striking juxtaposition of a towering black man amongst a sea of “little people”, what leaves you utterly gobsmacked is the ease he displays at speaking the language, like… well… a Chinese man eating with chopsticks.

You don’t often get a lad  originally from Soweto spewing smooth Mandarin, and living in China,nogal. But Rasethaba does, and, like the sun, his star is rising fast in the East. Just as it would have struck you as unlikely that people of Chinese origin would be classified as black South Africans, it is quite interesting to know of how he came to work and study film there.

I moved to China in 2007 for various whys and wherefores, mostly generic,” he explains. “I wanted to see the world and do something epic … all the usual reasons for a youngster coming from the townships. My father was on a government-related visit here some years back, and he called me up from a bar and said, ‘What are your thoughts on living in China?’… At the time I was working as a junior copywriter at advertising agency JWT and looking to make the transition into film. So I was like yeah, why not? I got this scholarship to come over and study for a masters degree in filmmaking.”
 
Place seems to be a significant thread that runs through Rasethaba`s life. He spent a lot of his childhood and adolescence trudging along with his family from place to place for various reasons. Perhaps it was not then a stroke of fate that place has formed the basis of his social inspection in his films so far.

                                 
 “I spent a lot of time hanging out with bouncers from nightclubs, prostitutes, car guards… all these people who were in South Africa illegally. Even though the film was picked up and shown by a terrestrial TV channel, I still think that a lot of South Africans do not have a clue on what most these people go through to survive as illegal immigrants and asylum seekers.”

Place, or rather displacement, is a continuing theme in his next effort. Sino (2009) tells the story of two African students in Beijing, dealing with the challenges of resettlement and adaptation in a foreign country.

“Making Sino was important to me because of my own personal experience, and of other students and immigrants here, be they from Africa, Europe or Middle Eastern,” he explains. “Relocation is a universal subject and the implications thereof vary from place to place. I wanted to put it in an African context because I had a much deeper understanding of it through my own experiences here.” The film is part one of a trilogy and is to be followed by a second installment, with the working title Awake.

He followed this introductory Chinese film with Metro, a short film he released early in 2010.This first foray into fiction revolves around despair, and looks at the life of a tormented foreign university student who gets caught up in the Chinese underworld as a result of negligence by his funders to provide him with his monthly living stipend. The short film won acclaim from critics and it was shown at a number of international film festivals.

                                       

Who inspires or influences his work? 

“I think it is very indeterminate, it depends on what I am working on or what I am feeling at the time. But there are some mainstays, directors Ousmane Sembene, and Spike Lee. I like work by various directors of the French New Wave era, John Kani, Errol Morris, Werner Hertzog and Zola Maseko amongst others.”

 He points to a number of local films which he says left a distinctive mark on his imagination growing up. “Sarafina is an obvious one. Mapantsula, Last Grave At Dimbaza, Zulu Love Letter. My only gripe with the South African film industry is that, like a lot of what happens in other parts of the world, you have people making films and telling other people`s stories, and narrating experiences which they haven`t had access to or experienced themselves. It is a sad situation when you have your own heroes portrayed by outsiders.”  

Finally, what type of film can be described as a trademark Lebogang Rasethaba film?

“I don’t know, I think I would not like to give my films an absolute tag, but if I were I would say something more or less along the lines of altruistic. It is what I hope resonates through in all my work.”

                                   

 
 

Mo-laudi: Afro-beat`s international scene

                                           

                                                                      The South African London - UK

                           
IN the third of a series looking at South African artists making an impact abroad DALUXOLO MOLOANTOA chats to Mo-laudi, a music artist who’s making a name for himself, and his blend of Afro-beat,in Europe and on the international scene.

Any artist worth their salt has graced a London stage at one point in their career, and Mo-laudi Bopape is no exception.An artist whose talents lie far beyond mere heritage curatorship and cultural rigidity, Mo-laudi is on a mission to free African music of the patronising and touristic tones that it has carried since the West showed renewed interest in it in the 1990s.

He is among a new generation of young, black, post-apartheid South African musicians who are making a global imprint through their artistic output, and he has been steadily raising his profile ever since he packed his bags and headed for Europe some 10 years back. So who exactly is the artist simply known as Mo-laudi?

“I am an African musician, on a mission to explore opportunities for African music, and how it could sound like for our generation,” articulates the second born of the arts-loving Bopape family. Mom and dad Bopape are long-time choral music administrators in Limpopo, and younger sister Dineo is a well-known South African visual illustrator.Unsurprisingly, London was his first port of call, and the place where he first cut his teeth on how to climb the ladder towards international musical acclaim.

Acclaim, indeed, has been long-time coming for the music production graduate who started emulating rap heroes RUN DMC, Public Enemy and Tupac Shakur at local talent contests in Seshego, Polokwane, as a youngster. The one regular employment he held down in his early days in London opened the path to his sturdy rise towards musical recognition.In fact, had he not been on duty one particular evening tending tables at a chic Notting Hill hang-out frequented by London`s arts set, he wouldn`t have come across the group of Welsh musicians with whom he would get his first break in treading the tricky terrain towards artistic recognition.

“I was serving them late afternoon drinks one midweek afternoon, and I overheard them talk about forming a new music band. I introduced myself and told them about my intentions,” he explains.

 "A few weeks later I was officially a new member of the newly-formed group W.O.M.B, short for Weapons of Mass Belief. It was a beginning of a remarkable music career, illustrious and still fledgling.”A host of producers came forth to help him and the new posse take their first steps out of the womb. Mo-laudi hit the ground running, contributing to the band`s socially conscious, and spellbinding blend of punk and hip hop, with verse after verse of highly-charged political mantras rapped and sung in English, and his native dialect Sepedi.

The result was Terrorist Youth, a 2005 EP which featured some well-known names behind the boards, amongst them Damian Taylor (Bjork, The Prodigy) and Graeme Stewart (Radiohead). The reviews spared no words in heaping applause on the effort, some singling out the South African band member for particular praise: “Frontman Mo-laudi is a Chuck D reincarnation – spitting lethal socio-political rhymes over the most hypnotic meld of rap and punk since Cypress Hill,” decreed London`s The Daily Telegraph.

“In addition to being exposed to such great talent, we started travelling extensively,” states Mo-laudi. Their trudging included a major tour in 2006 across the UK as part of BBC Radio 1`s “In New Music We Trust” tour, an annual summer showcase of British music`s likely contenders for musical kingship.The band also honoured a much-welcomed invitation to grace the stage at South by South West (SXSW) in Austin, Texas (USA) on the back of their instantly-applauded debut effort.

Along with his MC duties in W.O.M.B, Mo-laudi set forth on a path to align himself closer to his purpose of finding his own voice – and a Thursday night spot as resident DJ at FAVELA, a North London club catering for aficionados of African and Latin American music, was the launch pad. His brew of experimental productions and a mix of nostalgic/contemporary African tunes, toasted with live rap in his mother-tongue, proved to be just what London`s afro music scene was missing.

Towards the end of the same year Puma came knocking with a personal sponsorship deal, and a one-time chance to preside over music proceedings at a celebration party for sponsorship companion Usain Bolt in Berlin, Germany.In 2007, while performing at Seccouse, a popular weekly Afro/French club night, members of London-based Swedish producers Radioclit, loved what they heard from the South African MC. They promptly roped him into The Very Best (TVB), a collaborative project between Radioclit and Malawian vocalist Esau Mwamwaya. This came at an appropriate time for him because of an apparent decline in sonic output from W.O.M.B, leading to the group closing shop.

The following year, when Seccouse wanted to extend its brand to Paris, they asked Mo-laudi to shift location to the City of Lights to handle the project. Since then he has equally divided his time between his obligation to The Very Best, and handling procedures on the DJ decks at Seccouse and various other festivals and shows internationally. The same year was to deliver him the opportunity to showcase his skills as an African MC worthy of serious note, through the much-anticipated release of Warm Heart of Africa, the debut album from TVB.

An extensive tour to promote the album followed, taking in festivals, in-store appearances and TV performances throughout Europe (including at the Glastonbury Festival), the US, Australia and Africa – headlining the annual Lake of Stars Festival in Malawi.Apart from his affiliation to TVB, he has shared the stage with a commendable list of acts as a DJ in live shows – Roy Ayers, Miriam Makeba, Salif Keita, Youssor Ndou, Ismael Lo, Fatboy Slim, The Editors, M.I.A, The Roots, Giles Peterson, DJ Oskido and a number of other South African artists on tour in Europe.

As a parting shot, I tell him of a statement made by Ntone Edjabe, publisher of the Cape Town afrochic magazine Chimurenga.He once said: “If an African musician is booked to perform at a gig, they expect him to come with djembe drums. He is not expected to bring a laptop along."

“It is very important that we, as Africans, preserve our musical roots, but we should also ensure that we open ourselves up to what`s going on in the rest of the world musically and otherwise. How about if an artist brings both djembe drums and a laptop,” he replies.

Undeniably, Mo-laudi is the quintessence of the place where African music finds itself in the new millennium – at the crossroads of cultural endorsement and international appeal.

Mo-laudi is featured in the new The Very Best album MTMTMK and is currently working on his full debut album scheduled for release later in the year.