.: LIVE ON STAGE /// NONKU, ZAKI IBRAHIM, DOOKOOM, OKMALUMKOOLKAT & UMLILO

For someone who doesn’t care much for live music I’ve been to quite a lot of live music situations in the last few weeks. It’s not that I hate music in gen, but I’ve had a complicated relationship with it throughout my life. My earliest memory: I was still of single digit age, and I was singing in the backseat of my parent’s car when my mother suddenly couldn’t deal, and she broke the news to me, that I absolutely could not sing. She was right of course and I can’t hold that against her sweet soul. My parents have always been the supportive encouraging type, even when I got D’s in school, which was most of the time, they made me feel like such an achiever. So it was a pretty big deal for my mother to be like “Nah nigga, stop, no and don’t”. My mother doesn’t speak like that but you catch my drift.

Anyway, second music memory: I was about 12 and a bit of a flaming queen with purple overly styled relaxed hurr, and for some reason I couldn’t stand music and oranges, except Dolly Parton (may she live forever). I eventually got back into music in the early 90s, mostly hip hop (because as we all know hip hop is life itself), around Eazy E days, as a fag raised on gangsta rap, but it was never the same. I never got back into oranges, fuck citrus. To this day I prefer to listen to music only on my headphones, which I do a lot of. I hate having music play openly in the house, something the arty music loving live-in lover considers a punishment for his past life sins. Ag shem, arme ding.

So with such a complex relationship with music I’m sure you can imagine how tricky live music is for me. To be fair, there was a time over a decade ago in my early twenties when experimentation with all things psychedelic saw me chase around any opportunity for live acts and the dancefloor, but that was then, I was young, skinny, beautiful, high as fuck, and invincible. Now, the thought of tripping out fills me with schedule 6 anxiety, in large crowds nogal, no.

I’m rambling a bit, and I’m kind of forgetting the point I wanna make, or if I even had a point. Anyway, ja, I’ve been to these events and I saw these artists live, at mostly intimate events, all within the last month or so, and I thoroughly enjoyed them, some with a beer in hand, some whilst I was sober. I recommend you get to know them if you still don't. I’m kinda hoping this is the beginning of a new relationship with live music for me. Yay. Enjoy, or not, whatevs.

NONKU @ ITS A TEXTILE MARKET