Art overload
The artsy opening of JamiiSanaa on Thursday saw a mashup of Tanzanian and Brazilian artists strut their stuff.
On Friday, at the Sweet Eazy in Oyster Bay, saw an extended version of the set they played on the beach the day before. The artists were the singer Carola Kinasha from Dar, the guitarist Ashimba from Bagamoyo and the rather impressive two man drumbeat machine from Brazil on a tour sponsored by their embassy here, percussionists Pandeiro Repique Duo. They were joined by some guy on what might have been a soprano saxohpone.
Individually, the artists are decent enough, but it was in the mashup where they really became more than the individual sounds combined, rising even higher when, at times, they were effectively creating live trip hop sounds on stage. Extremely enjoyable.
Earlier, my colleague Lorna had invited me to a function heralding her graduation at Creatives Connect, where she followed something of a business course for artists, sponsored, in part, by the British Council and the Danish Embassy. Perhaps they, that is, the British, were showing off their former colonial ties as, opposed to the night before, the free drinks included nice Tall Horse wines and a host of snacks.
Interesting was one of the artists actually having cobbled together an SMS tracking service, I suspect with the product Frontline SMS, which allows you to hook up a cellphone with a computer and then use your computer as something of an SMS server or gateway.