Jo'Blog: A South African Music Experience

Last night a couple friends and I went to see Johnny Clegg at the Montecasino Teatro. When I heard his concert announced on the radio a couple of weeks ago, I got pretty excited. Sure, I'd only ever heard one of his songs ("Dela"), and sure, the only reason I knew that song at all was because it was in George of the Jungle, but ever since downloading music was possible, I downloaded that song (yep, back in the Napster days) and added it to all my burned CDs. And now, it is on all my driving (aka sing-along) playlists. Last year, Nina (a friend from WMU) even caught me singing and dancing along to this song in my car on the way to a meeting. So to sum this all up, it's probably my favourite song ever.

I asked one of my friends here if she liked Johnny Clegg and if she would be interested in going to the concert with me. She said he was really good and we have to go, so last weekend she, her sister, and I bought tickets. Since we were a little slow on the procuring of the tickets, we were in the very last row of the very highest balcony. It actually wasn't that bad though. We still had a pretty good view, and a lot more leg room than most theatres I've been to. We also discovered that being in the last row means you can stand up to dance whenever you want, without fear of bothering the people behind you. Something that really surprised me about this theatre was that you could bring drinks (purchased from the theatre bar) into the show! Apparently this isn't a regular occurrence in South Africa though because the girls I went with were quite surprised by it as well.

The show itself was excellent. He played a couple songs that he said were from a new album but I think mostly he played his older, more well-known songs. I even recognized a couple from the radio here (so I actually did know more than one song). Almost all of the songs were great, happy, and easy to dance to. He also had some Zulu dancers come out for a couple of the songs and the Soweto Gospel Choir sang for about 5 songs. It felt like a real African experience. I had enjoyed the concert so much that by the time he had played his encore song and introduced the band, I had resigned myself to the fact that my song, the reason I came to the concert in the first place, wouldn't be played. But after the band introductions, the music started up again. I couldn't believe it. Dela was the last song of the night and I enjoyed every second of it!