Morena Leraba: From The Village To The World Stage

Lesotho. The only country in the world landlocked by a single country, South Africa, and the country that raised me. Growing up, we were surrounded by music, but little of it came from within our borders, especially when it came to contemporary music. In fact, the only group that gained any kind of real prominence outside our borders was Sankomota, made up of musicians like Frank Leepa, Moss Nkofu, Black Jesus, Moruti Selate, Tšepo Tšola and Pitso Sera. In more recent years, there have been rappers like Hymphatic Thabs and Kommanda Obbs, musicians like Bhudaza and Tsepo Tsola as a solo...

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Taking The Olympics Personally

As we live, and learn, and grow, we leave dreams by the wayside, and move onto other aspects of this thing called life. As a child, I was always into one sport or another, both playing and watching. Football, basketball, volleyball, tennis, the various track and field events, etc, I was into them all. I was generally competent or slightly above average at most sports never really showing any type of potential beyond school – until I discovered sprinting. My high school track was 200metres, instead of the traditional 400 metres, of grass and clay with the odd stone here and there. Running the...

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Soundtrack to a Lifetime (CP)

Written on September 22nd, 2009 Do you ever sit and wonder what music will sound like in 10 years from now? 20 years? With all the talk that television and cinema are going to dwindle in popularity, do you ever wonder what you will be watching in the future? Do you ever look at your parents and wonder what they really think about the music you are passionate about today? If your parents are over 50 years of age, they were probably born into an Africa with no (or very few) cars, no television, no telephones (let alone cellphones), no computers, no electricity, no running water in homes, etc....

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What Do You Know About Breakin’?

I just had to post this. This clip was posted on my Facebook timeline by 'a friend'; it brought back so many memories. And, lately, I've been doing a lot of reminiscing, particularly in terms of music, but also with film. In 1984/85, in the small city of Maseru, Lesotho, a small b-boy (breakdancing) crew was born in a high school called Machabeng. The only space we had, to figure out moves and draw inspiration from, was a movie called Breakin' which centred around two characters, Ozone (Adolfo Quiñones) and Turbo (Michael Chambers). One of the legendary moments in this film is the one below,...

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