We are very happy with our guest house in Grahamstoen. Its called 11 Worcester on Durban and we have our own entrance to a nice room behind the main house. Love the heated stone floors in the mornings.
Saturday was clear, sunny and a little cool. We started out with a walk around the village Green which is the central area for the festival though the performance venues are spread out all over town in school buildings.
The Village Green had lots of African folk art for sale, food vendors, one band stage and box office to purchase performance tickets. All of the events other than art exhibits require tickets – prepaid or at the door. Big events are sold out but for many shows you just pay at the door. Tickets are heap, $3 to $7 per event. We had pre-ordered a few shows and ended up missing a coupe of those. There are very few outdoor shows, probably because it is winter.
Bill tried a kudo burger from the Rotary Club booth and we did a little shopping. They had some great vendor food booths with South African foods.
We saw Nibs van der Spuy, great vocalist and acoustic guitarist in the afternoon. Loved his music and bought two of his CD’s. Listen to his music at http://www.myspace.com/nibs
- Nibs van der Spuy playing at Grahamstown Arts Festival
Saw Paige Mac in a bar venue (Prime Gig) with a couple other bands playing short shows. However there weren’t many people in the audience at 5:30pm.
Wandered around the town. Grahamstown is a beautiful university town, very English looking.
Saw free performance of an African indigenous women’s dance group. As we were leaving that performance, a group of school kids start singing the South African national anthem. When I started taking photos they started posing and singing more songs to us. They wanted to take pictures with me and I gave me a couple of NOLA music CDs. They were from the Transkei region of SA and had never heard of Louisiana.
Squeezed in a quick dinner at a place called The Long Table which is a church hall turned into a restaurant for festival time. Dinner is buffet of hot local foods and family style seating. Hot butternut squash soup was great. During the meal a rag tag band dropped in, sang a couple of songs and then passed the hat for tips. Everywhere you go small groups are singing or performing and handing out flyers to drum up business for their show.
We went home to get our car to drive to a dance performance called Opera for Fools. It wasn’t what we expected and we ended up being one of those people who left mid show. The review below describes the show quite well.
http://oppidanpress.com/opera-for-fools-not-everyones-cup-of-tea/
Two women sitting next to us left as soon as we got up. Had a nice chat with them in the parking lot. I didn’t want to end the evening with a poor show so we headed to school gym to see a play called “Hope is the Saddest” which was a comedy/drama about three strangers whose lives come together and Dolly Parton’s music and lyrics play a key theme. It was decent, not award winning but a better ending to the evening than Opera for Fools.
