Starting as the cold and wet Cape Town winter begins to warm up in September, the sounds of an at-first decidedly amateurish brass band wafts through the open windows of our Woodstock flat every Sunday afternoon and into the evening from the park just around the corner.
Wandering around the corner reveals a hundred or more mainly young people armed with trumpets and tubas and trombones and percussion instruments of all sorts being schooled passage by repetitive passage in a particular piece of music. As the temperature rises through the spring and early summer, their proficiency steadily improves, and their ranks swell with scores of marchers, twirlers and dancers.
They are all members of the local klopse, or troupe of minstrels, who, along with perhaps a dozen other troupes from around region, will take part in the annual Kaapse Klopse, or minstrel carnival, that fills the streets of Cape Town with their vibrant colours, raucous music, precision marching and an all around celebration of Cape coloured life and culture that dates back to the nineteenth century.
The carnival is traditionally held on and around Tweede Nuwe Jaar, or second New Year, the one day of the year that the Dutch colony’s slaves were given a day off and permitted to celebrate their culture. (Cape coloureds are a proudly distinctive multiracial grouping in South Africa whose ancestry is a mix of indigenous, immigrant, bantu and East Indian slaves.)
I spent a sun-filled several hours taking pictures at this year’s carnival, including many of “our” troupe, decked out in their white and neon green outfits. The kids, ranging from preschoolers to teenagers, were definitely the most fun to photograph.
