Artist Profiles and Art Reviews Archives - Consciousness.co.za Magazine

Sabbatical: A Mother’s Scorn, a Daughter’s Descent, and the Ghosts of a Nation’s Past

Xolani Mthombeni — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 19:24:16 +0000

Diprente, it seems, isn’t content with mere entertainment; they’re excavating the raw nerve of South African society with Sabbatical, a film that grips you by the throat and refuses to let go. Forget your predictable narratives of aspiration; Karabo Lediga’s latest offering is a searing indictment of ambition untethered from morality, a brutal examination of [...]

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A telling tale that keeps giving

Xolani Mthombeni — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 18:59:40 +0000

Storytelling is one of the most intricate and thickest tentacles of soft power. It maps and drives the compass of the mind into a labyrinth flurry of thought, expression, emotion, stimulation and a direction. A host of writers and authors have told stories that speak to the listener and readers in variable forms, tiers and [...]

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Changing the Game on the real

Xolani Mthombeni — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 18:54:16 +0000

A legend is legendary, the title is aptly befittingly bestowed on them for their distinctively excellent work that has been promulgated and has unrelentingly permeated their relevant field. At times their exertions cross over and overlap to remote territories. Their pioneering work is accosted by an unexploited footprint that they have long ear-marked as a [...]

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When Compassion Meets Diversity

Xolani Mthombeni — Sat, 30 Nov 2024 18:56:58 +0000

As the holiday season is in full swing, many will return to their bucolic surroundings to bid farewell to a year that was filled with hard work, shying away from fatigue,and the bustle of deviating from honking traffic to being besieged with an unending workload. Also, a handful of the exodus are ejecting out of [...]

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(Re) Taking off of the African Blues

Xolani Mthombeni — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 10:52:20 +0000

Throughout the past eight decades the world has been presented with the supremacy of John Coltrane: – the timelessness exuding from Take the “A” Train composition of Duke Ellington, or the home longing and evoking Hugh Masekela’s Stimela. At a particular instance, the courting and metaphoric Mbongeni Ngema’s Stimela Sase Zola, and now a paced [...]

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A Slanting Wind of the Blues

Xolani Mthombeni — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 08:27:05 +0000

As the step into spring has blossomed, the scent of pollen outside calls for newer, brighter, and better beginnings especially that of the diaspora and the African spirited realm. What better way to usher it in than with the drizzle of blues a courtesy extended by the Motherland International Blues and Jazz Festival. For the [...]

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A Deft Depth Connection

Xolani Mthombeni — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 08:50:57 +0000

The trumpet is brass wind instrument as old as time, dating back Before Christ, the (B.C) eon. It is an instrument that connotes depth, attention and eminent calls, be it ethereal spaces, upheavals or revolts. Even in social calls the trumpet is a clarion voice of change. This thread sounded at the twenty fifth Standard [...]

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A relevant jazz anvil

Xolani Mthombeni — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 17:55:44 +0000

We live in a rapid paced world where not so long ago waterless systems, heated towel rails and digitised homes with timed lighting seemed and sounded light years ahead. In tandem, this was also when the colours and flavours of jazz and music enriched our homes, hearts and spaces. In timeline intervals, it is an [...]

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An Alive Jazz Delight

Xolani Mthombeni — Sun, 31 Mar 2024 14:29:01 +0000

As a people, our inclined notion that mother nature is able to take care of herself is irrefutable. Throughout times, whether sunrise or sunset, without cessation, she evolves and re affirms herself as a persevering entity. Much like jazz, her modulation is gradual, and in the same length, definite. Under the unpredictable gleam of today’s [...]

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A new jazz face

Xolani Mthombeni — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 08:00:31 +0000

Jazz in our lifetime has endured and ascertained without fail that in its outright mother form it will continue to remain a catalyst and a dynamic driver of social regeneration. Despite being snubbed as a mere one percent market share value contributor, in its soft and staying power, it still has appeal and a distinct [...]

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