The good tunes just keep on rolling at the
Rainbow Restaurant in Pinetown. Coming up is a four gig tour of the city from
Japanese trio Sakaki Mango and The Limba Train Sound System.
“So, we recently hosted electro-percussive
band Napalma,” says Rainbow co-owner Neil Comfort. “Bandleader, Ivo Maia heads
up Molwene Productions and pretty much as soon as he got back to Johannesburg
from that concert, he contacted us asking whether we would be keen to host this
Japanese band that goes under the name of Sakaki Mango and The Limba Train
Sound System. Napalma had toured with them around Swaziland and Mozambique when
they came out for the 2012 Bushfire Festival in Swaziland. One read of the
biography and we were sold.”
Native of Kagoshima, Kyushu Island,
southern Japan, Sakaki Mango found a record of Hukwe Ubi Zawose, the master of Tanzanian
lamellaphones, at a local library. The deep, buzzing sound of the "limbas"
irresistibly aroused his curiosity. After a stint at a local university, he set
off for Africa with a language diploma in Swahili and a desire to learn more
about this very African instrument.
The thumb piano, aka kalimba, is an
instrument which tells stories. Sometimes made with a few nails flattened with
a hammer, sometimes with more than 50 thick blades, carefully polished, result
of hundreds of hours of work, sacred instrument or simple hobby for the rainy
days. Shells, spiders’ nests, beer caps or pieces of can give to each
instrument the originality of its designer, a very unique sound. Each mbira,
limba, kalimba, Likembé or Kisanji is linked to a region or even just a
village, a people and its history and compose a rich and vibrant African
heritage.
On returning to Japan he forged his own
musical universe with the Limba Train Sound System. Its energetic melodies,
tinted with sounds from Bagamoyo, Harare, Kinshasa or Lusaka, sung in a mixture
of Swahili and Kyushu Island dialect are a powerful entanglement of musical
traditions and modernisms overlapping and fitting together in a very original
and creative Afro-Asian sound.
Opening the evening will be the Durban band
The Accidentals with DJ Japanese Cowboy to provide links during the breaks.
Sakaki Mango and The Limba Train Sound
System will perform on April 25 at the Rainbow Restaurant Estd 1981 at 23 Stanfield Lane, Pinetown. Doors
open at 20h00. Tickets R50 at the door or via https://www.webtickets.co.za/event.aspx?itemid=404960125
More information on 031 702 9161, 083 463
8044, bandwagon@artslink.co.za or
visit www.therainbow.co.za
Sakaki
Mango will also perform at the KZNSA Gallery on April 26 at 18h00 (Tickets R40
booked through 031 201 9969); at Summerhill Guest Lodge, Cowies Hill, on April 27
(Freedom Day) at 15h00 (Tickets R50 booked through 031 709 3616), and at The
Stables Market at Drumshack on April 28 at 18h00 (Tickets R40)
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