Category: Night & Day

SATURDAY 22 | Four of the capital’s most prolific singer-songwriters file onto the Equinox stage tonight, but not as you know them. Jerby Santo (Jaworski 7), Robin Narciso (Sangvar Day), Joshua Chiang (Sonic Detergent) and Richard Marshall (he of the much-loved open mics at Sundance and Equinox) are abandoning their usual band mates and striking out in back-to-back solo shows.

WHO: Robin Narciso, Jerby Santo, Richard Marshall, & Joshua Chiang
WHAT: Back-to-back solo singer-songwriter shows
WHERE: Equinox, #3a Street 278
WHEN: 9pm March 22
WHY: “Solo artists are generally totally insane. Elton John? Slightly eccentric. George Michael? He’s mad as custard.” – Noel Gallagher

 

FRIDAY 21 | An intoxicating blend of Congolese gospel chorister and Parisian jazz singer, Esther Mwauka – billed as a vocalist, choir leader, song writer and teacher – is taking a time-out from her duties at the altar to embark on a solo performance that’s equal parts African soul and French ballad.

WHO: Mwauka & The Gang
WHAT: An intoxicating blend of Congolese gospel and Parisian jazz
WHERE: Slur, #28 Street 172
WHEN: 9:30pm March 21
WHY: Hear two very different worlds collide

 

THURSDAY 20 & 21 | “Everything starts with an E,” chirped MC Kinky as part of the E-Zee Possee in 1989, homage to the meteoric rise of acid house and, more specifically, a great new drug called ecstasy. BBC Radio 1 promptly threw up its collective hands in horror, banning the song outright. In so doing, the station secured the destiny of the track – penned by Kinky, Boy George, Simon Rogers and Jeremy Healy – to become a global dance anthem. And it set this white female ragamuffin toaster on a course that would ultimately take her – via incarnations as Cantankerous, Feral, The Infidel, and finally Feral Is Kinky – from growing up in a small flat above a London betting shop to cutting a Number 1 hit single with Erasure, the pop duo’s anthemic remix of Abba’s Take A Chance On Me, and beyond. The first MC to chat dancehall lyrics over music other than reggae, Feral’s breed of low-slung ragga chat is a by-product of being obsessed with reggae from the age of eight (she used to get woken up in the middle of the night by the heavy bass pumping from a shebeen next door, the music still thumping by the time she got up to go to primary school) and knowing no racial boundaries. Today, following her first official solo release My Selector last year, a sound system-inspired dubstep banger (“Play one last tune, my selector” she raps over wub wub bass and big beats), Feral can be forgiven for looking back on her rave days with misty eyes. “When I MC’d over Everything starts with an E, I hadn’t taken one,” she tells The Independent. “The track got banned from Radio 1 and TV, but it was massive. I had no manager, agent, nothing. People used to phone up my house all the time and say, ‘Hi my name’s so and so, can you do a gig?’ Me and my mates would drive up to a massive party somewhere. I’d put my hair in curlers in the car, put on mad light-reflecting clothes in pub toilets. When the screechy guitar on Everything began, the crowd would roar like a football stadium. Afterwards I’d get off stage and go and dance for hours with everyone else. People would come up to me saying, ‘I love you. I love your hair. You’ve changed my life.’ I couldn’t believe it.”

WHO: Feral is Kinky
WHAT: Electronic ragga, manic house, Moombahton bass and dub step
WHERE: Pontoon, St. 172
WHEN: 11pm March 20 & 21
WHY: Everything starts with an E

THURSDAY 20 | Rather more genteel than a poetry slam, but by no means any less provocative, tonight’s Open Stage Poetry hosts a writers’ meet, an open mic and two readings. The first is by novelist Sue Guiney, whose just-released Out Of The Ruins is set in modern-day Cambodia. The second is by Bryan Humphrey, who will be sharing his vivid imaginings by verse.

WHO: Sue Guiney & Bryan Humphrey
WHAT: Open Stage Poetry
WHERE: Java Arts, #56 Sihanouk Blvd.
WHEN: 6pm March 20
WHY: “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history” – Plato

 

THURSDAY 20 | Davy Chou’s Golden Slumbers is a triumph of cultural excavation and preservation. Through clips from surviving films, audio recordings of their soundtracks, visits to sites where films were shot and interviews with the filmmakers, producers, performers and devoted cinephiles who created Cambodia’s ‘Golden Era’ film culture, Chou reconstructs this tragically but intriguingly lost world. The grandson of a leading film producer of the time, Van Chann, Chou is no distanced observer and his documentary is a deeply committed chronicle of a chapter of film (and world) history that continues to exist in the memories and stories of its surviving creators and devotees.

WHO: Davy Chou
WHAT: Golden Slumbers screening, with director Q&A
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm March 20
WHY: Meet the man behind the movie

 

THURSDAY 20 | German photographer Arjay Stevens joins Cambodian painter Chhim Sothy in an exploration of all things abstract. Says Arjay: “I have tried – as almost all serious photographers do – to take pictures of our real world in the best and most interesting way, but this is a lifelong pursuit that in early form involved showing many things in a photo. During the last decade, I have tried to concentrate on minimising in my art photography. This is, from the technical aspects, a challenging intellectual process. In our world bursting with information, increasingly noisy, filled with the loudest colours and overcrowded, to concentrate on the ‘simple’ or to express the ‘essential point’ is hard. From the general to the substance: this is abstraction.”

WHO: Arjay Stevens & Chhim Sothy
WHAT: Abstractions art & photography exhibition opening
WHERE: New Art Gallery, #20 Street 9 (next to Phsar Kabko market)
WHEN: 6pm March 20
WHY: “There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.” – Pablo Picasso

SATURDAY 15  |TJ Brown first fell for bluegrass in North Carolina, where he learned to play the guitar. Tonight, after a too-long hiatus, Grass Snake Union reforms as this much-loved lead guitarist and vocalist makes a return from his native US. As well as standards such as the music of Bill Monroe, the band interprets tunes by Lady Gaga, MGMT and The Pixies. “It runs the gamut: we’re playing songs written 90 years ago and songs written one year ago,” says TJ. Expect new covers, original tunes and songs from obscure Americana acts such as The Devil Makes 3, Gillian Welch and Zack Langton (TJ’s brother-in-law).

WHO: Grass Snake Union
WHAT: Bluegrass
WHERE: Equinox, #3a St.278
WHEN: 9pm March 15
WHY: They’re BACK!

SATURDAY 15  |Part African, part Brazilian, 100% percussion and all-woman: Bloco Malagasy, from Southern Madagascar, beat their drums – quite literally – in the name of women’s rights. These 60 percussionists from impoverished backgrounds, here to workshop with their Southeast Asian counterparts, merge Brazilian and Malagasy rhythms to create an entirely new musical beast.

WHO: Bloco Malagasy
WHAT: All-girl percussion show
WHERE: Doors, Street 84 & 47
WHEN: 8pm March 15
WHY: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away” – Henry David Thoreau

SATURDAY 15  | From the loins of pioneers such as Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and King Tubby have sprung forth a new generation of lyrical Rastafarians who, like their forefathers, use the sacrament of music to promote everything from ganja to the unifying concept of One Love. Among their number are Kaztet D (MC, singer, activist, made in France), the creative force behind new sound system collective Wat A Gwaan (‘What’s going on?’ in reggae lingo), who tonight will resurrect Jamaican classics from the ‘60s and ‘70s.

WHO: Wat A Gwaan
WHAT: Reggae sound system
WHERE: Slur, #28 Street 172
WHEN: 9:30pm March 15
WHY: Bob would approve

SATURDAY 15 |From a wall of speakers comes a familiar rush; the sort of sonic crescendo designed to reduce Olympic stadiums to near-rubble. Two-thirds French, one part Italian, Sangvar Day are among the capital’s newest and most accomplished hard rockers. Brace for impact.

WHO: Sangvar Day
WHAT: All-original hard rock
WHERE: Memphis, Street 118
WHEN: 10pm March 15
WHY: See ‘WHAT’