The Context for Goemarati
Goemarati is one of the programmes of the Cape Town Partnership's Creative Cape Town Strategy.
The Cape Town Partnership was established in July 1999 by the City of Cape Town, the South African Property Owners Association (SAPOA), the Cape Town Regional Chamber of Commerce and Industry and other stakeholders to develop, manage and promote the Cape Town Central City.
In 2004, after achieving most of its objectives and following a historic and highly successful East City Precinct Conference, the Partnership identified new strategic programmes, including extending its social development projects, playing a role in sustainability debates, exploring social housing possibilities and embarking on an exciting creative cities programme.
The Creative Cape Town Strategy recognises the intrinsic role that culture plays in society. It is a social, economic and spatial strategy that aims to promote an active, vibrant and diverse city center. It recognizes that culture can and does play an important role in cultural diversity and can foster social inclusion and has economic imperatives. Creative Industries and Cultural Tourism has the ability to impact positively on space and environment and create better cities to live in.
Goemarati is one of four major areas of work in the Creative Cape Town strategy. The strategy covers a few important aspects, namely:
a) promoting local distinctiveness - recognizing that there is value in local culture, history and memory. This is important for us as a city which has been divided and where a new identity out of the old requires us to consider the old in its entirety. For this reason Goema is important
b) that culture can bring people together in space and virtually through ideas and through the internet
c) that culture can play a role in urban regeneration - and not just through the built environment
d) that there is a real connection between products that are made in the creative industries and the potential for showcasing it to cultural tourists - who are looking for authentic cultural experiences of place to take home with them. We also recognise that people like to buy and support the culture of a place once they understand its meaning in context and in history
We recognized that there is no strong Made in Cape Town brand that could rally locals (let alone tourists!) and we wanted to acknowledge and celebrate the many successful and exciting artists the city produces - musicians, film makers, designers and many more.
Where it all started
The Cape Town Partnership, the production company Coffee Beans Routes, an advertising agency called Lunch and the Creative Cape Town reference team got together and gave structure to a Goemarati programme - recognising that Goema is the sound of the Cape and one of our key cultural resources. We received support for the programme from the Provincial Government of the Western Cape's Economic Development and Tourism Department. Later, the City of Cape Town came on board to support a final gig at an end of the first series of concerts in 2007.
The first set of Goemarati consisted of three key parts:
1. It was a series of concerts taking place in venues across Cape Town Central City between February and August 2007. Once a month, on Church Square, in the centre of town, and once a month at a venue on the Cape Flats, including Bonteheuwel, Khayelitsha, Manenberg, Langa, Mitchell's Plain and Kalkfontein. The concerts were about showcasing the city in its diversity of music, poetry and food. There were always delicious indigenous food for sale and we attracted a wide range of people to the events. We featured poets and bands, with an MC holding it all together. Open mike sessions were also featured. The acts all had to be Cape Town based and had to provide us with a product to sell on our mobile vendor and website. Some of the acts we featured have product you can find for sale on this site include
Maveriq
Loit Sols
Ernie Deane
Brasse Vannie Kaap
Alanfunk
Jitsvinger
Robbie Jansen
2. The Mobile Vendor was created to sell products at the concerts. This is a custom built music-trolley, designed by the wacky artist Marc O Donovan, Cape Town's own odd engineer. Apart from buying music from the vendor, it also sells films and publications, like the brilliant magazine Chimurenga, as well as items like aromatherapy products or USB ports made of Port Jackson wood. You can find the mobile vendor at special events, at Creative Cape Town events and (of course!) at unexpected places.
3. This website was conceived as a way for us to get the Goemarati message out to the world, to enable people from around the country and the globe to buy Cape Town products, thereby being an important e-commerce platform for creatives in the city. Real Life concepts helped us build it and it's a real showcase of their work.
Why Church Square, Goema, and who is Oom Jan?
The stage for the first Goemarati was Church Square - and for good reason. Church Square lies in the shadow of the Slave Lodge and the Groote Kerk where slaves were auctioned under the slave tree. We recognise that slaves played a critical role in the creation of the current creolised culture of our city. Also we recognize that before them the indigenous people of this land - the Khoi and the San were dispossessed of their land by colonials who used the area of the central city as their base to eventually colonise the rest of South Africa. Our city is creolised - it's a mixture. Whether it is slaves from Indonesia and Mozambique, Indigenous people, Lithiuanian Jews, prospectors from around Europe or even current migrants from the Eastern Cape or further afield from Somalia or the DRC, it is a city constantly in motion.
Goema came out of the mix of people that made this unique city of ours. It is the sound of the Goema drum in the Minstrels Carnival and the backbeat of Cape Jazz. Goema is a way to remember the slaves, the indigenous peoples of this place and to remember their part in our lives and our cultural heritage. To remember it in this way, is an attempt to heal the city, finding a way to reconcile with the past, with our painful recent history and our sometimes difficult present. But Goema is also our future, because we are always in the moment. It represents our city being constantly in motion. Goemarati is a subtle way at reconciling these pasts and presents and recognising the vast diversity that is our Cape Town today.
So we ask you then to unfreeze Oom Jan - a dour statue that still sits on Church Square. Oom Jan was an important player in the codification of the Afrikaans language, which we recognise today as being itself a creolised language developed by slaves initially to communicate with their masters. It was written first in Arabic script and its first book was the Muslim holy book - the Qur'an. We hope that ultimately Goemarati will be an important vehicle to challenge some of the preconceived notions of the cities and to uncover its rich and fascinating history.
Where to now
Watch this site for ongoing projects on Goemarati and its off-shoot Goematronics. Support our local music by buying some of our city's amazing creative products here.
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