The best of both worlds

Jun 2 2009 by David Whetstone, The Journal

Just back from South Africa, David Whetstone reports on cultural links with the North East. Pictures by Jenny Dewar

If you get the chance to see the vocal group Amandla Esandla when they next visit the North East, then grab it. Selected from auditions organised by music workers from The Sage Gateshead, the five singers have a cappella singing down to a fine art.

In one wonderful moment of cross-cultural harmony – at a barbecue at Peter Stark’s Port Elizabeth home, to be precise – North East actress Val McLane stood up to sing a song she had written years ago for a show about women’s rights.

It was a solo performance for about one verse before the singers of Amandla Esandla and other South African performers present turned it into a spontaneous choral number with perfect pitch and harmonising.

Also travelling with us was the actor Monde Wani, who is something of a Swallows veteran, having performed in Elephant, Dodgy Clutch theatre company’s pioneering Eastern Cape venture, and addressed the World Summit on Arts & Culture in Gateshead in 2006.

A natural comedian but also one of the reborn South Africa’s serious international talents, he educated and entertained us with an astute running commentary on arts policy in his homeland.

He is all for the kind of partnerships being encouraged and nurtured under the Swallows umbrella.

Travelling largely as an observer, it was interesting listening to the arts professionals from the North East, being privy to their reservations and their enthusiasms. It will be even more interesting to see how this develops over time. Peter Stark has to justify to the Arts Council its investment in a project whose benefits are felt 6,000 miles away. How does he do that?

By demonstrating that partnerships with places such as Eastern Cape invigorate our own culture, he said, adding that everything, even The Sage Gateshead, needed to be kept fresh to sustain interest.

Via the Swallows Partnership, he added, we in the North East get a rich and genuine taste of African culture.

Port Elizabeth, named after a colonial lady who never visited the place, is to be renamed. Through sport – rugby and next year football – South Africa is showing a new face to the world. Culture can also contribute and, if Peter Stark is right, we can all benefit.

You can read my South Africa blog at www.journallive.co.uk/ culture and click on Culture Blog.