An unfinished lament for Margery McGregor I think of your crisp blue eyes and wispy white hairThat framed your face like a penumbra of snowI remember the night before you died and I satOn the floor by your bed holding your handI think I never was as close to you as...
Enough energy to power a spaceship One of the greatest talents among many great talents on Miles Davis’s seminal album Kind of Blue was tenor man John Coltrane and he also produced an outstanding album which broke new jazz ground in1959: Giant Steps ....
“I believe in people, art, poetry, music, creativity and love … my art is an interaction between me and my surroundings.” – Wesley Pepper What is the meaning of art in the South Africa of the 21st Century? Wesley Pepper is answering that question by doing art,...
War isn’t beautiful “War wasn’t beautiful at all. It was the ugliest thing I had ever seen and it made me do the ugliest thing I had ever done. The real story of war wasn’t about the firing and the fighting, some Boy’s Own adventure of goodies...
“Miscegenation – n. The inter-breeding of people of different races. – Origin C19: formed irregularly from L. miscere ‘to mix’ + genus ‘race’ + -ation (Concise Oxford English Dictionary)” “Unrestrained sexual intercourse between the black...
The recording date Fifty years ago this year (2009) trumpeter extraordinaire Miles Davis went into a studio in New York with six of the top jazz musicians of the day and laid down five tracks which have together made up a unique jazz album which is still rated as not...
The Wild Coast The Transkei Wild Coast is a scenic wonderland of unspoilt beaches, gently rolling hills covered with lush green grass interspersed with some rugged ravines, dramatic cliff faces topped with wild banana trees with ferns growing out of the cracks in the...
Modern Art – do you dig it? Much has been written about modern art. Many people seem not to really like it, claiming that they don’t understand it, or that it’s ugly. Now I know one’s taste in art is a very personal thing. And people can become very defensive about...
Gleaming golden onion-shaped domes are not common sights on the Highveld – or anywhere else in South Africa, for that matter. The ones that caught my eye while driving from Pretoria to Johannesburg on the N1 highway one day belong to the parish church of St Sergius of...
Echoes of a Victorian theological controversy which played out in the British Natal colony are heard in the Presbyterian Church of St Saviour’s in Midrand, Gauteng. In 1853 Anglican divine and mathematician John William Colenso was appointed Bishop of Natal by...
