Pops Mohamed and Desert Rose - iStart2 Ambassadors

Award-winning masters; LYNN HOLMES, founder of DESERT ROSE and master of crossover world music compositions with YUSUF GANIEF, and POPS MOHAMED, beloved master of indigenous music, committed to being ambassadors for the iStart2 movement.

They have become highly respected for their ingenious ability to fuse indigenous sounds, melodies and rhythms, including Islam, Sufi, Traditional African, the Koi, and others. The experience of their amazing ability to unite people from all cultures through their music and reminding us of our common humanity and spirituality, will greatly contribute to the iStart2 dream of creating a sustainable world.

Pops Mohamed is an award-winning South African musician and producer. Famed for his range of styles, which include kwela, pop, jazz and soul, and known by fans as The Minister of Music, he plays a wide variety of traditional instruments including the African mouth bow, berimbau, didgeridoo, kora and the thumb piano. He lives in Joburg and has three children.

My parents were very supportive of my music career from the beginning. My father took me to lessons. I started gigging around Joburg and Pretoria with my first band, Les Valiants, when I was about 14. We wrote original music and had a couple of hit singles. After June 1976 I needed a good reason to continue doing what I was doing. People wanted messages of hope in their music. I looked back to my roots, to the miners in the shebeens playing indigenous African instruments.

Studying traditional African instruments and music was my contribution to the struggle. They were vanishing. So, I did workshops at Dorkay House with ethnomusicologist Andrew Tracey. I started playing the kalimba and developed a certain sound, and was still playing in pop bands. I tried to recreate the sounds I heard as a child. It was the beginning of my journey.

The kind of music I make is not commercial. It's for a niche market. Internationally, it has really been appreciated, especially after 1994, when South Africa became such a focal point. The timing was right. I play at lots of festivals and travel constantly.

I keep all my plane tickets and boarding passes. I don't know why.

As a Muslim, I am semi-religious. I go to mosque and observe fasts. In Actonville, Benoni, where I grew up, there was a mix of different religions. We'd go to each other's houses. There's a lot of ignorance. It's time the world realised Muslims and terrorists are different things.

If you want to make it as a musician then stay focused. Don't get distracted. Believe in yourself. Concentrate, practise and be around musicians. Listen to all styles of music.

I'm optimistic about South Africa.I love my country. Whenever I return home, I have a big smile on my face. There's racism in all countries, especially in England, where I lived for a while. Here, we just want to carry on with our lives, get on with things. If someone says something racist, we laugh: what era are you from?

(Excerpt from Sunday Times, 12 February 2012)

iStart2 Vision, Mission & Values

Vision

 

A “Sustainability-Through- Arts” global movement

in which communities will participate

in re-imagining and implementing solutions

towards ensuring sustainable footprints

for our children.

Mission:

To provide a platform where people can take hands across boundaries and connect to create and re-imagine practical solutions for a sustainable future. 

 

Using the arts to communicate in a fun and positive way that talks to the head

and hearts of diverse communities and inspire them to use their hands in

saving water, energy and waste 

 

Building bridges and form partnerships with world leaders, their foundations

and the networks supporting them 

 

People with “all abilities”, disadvantaged communities and Indigenous Peoples

of the world will form the core of the iStart2 movement interconnected with

Artists, Business, Government, The Media, Religious Communities, Schools, Universities, Colleges, Elderly Folk (and Old Age Homes)

Main Objectives for 2012

Inspiring 1 million people in South Africa to commit to saying “I Start 2… do one thing to contribute to a sustainable world

Contribute through massive and extensive marketing to the government’s goal of placing 1 million solar geysers in homes across South Africa and reducing the countries overall power consumption.

Committing to exchange a minimum of 24 thousand light bulbs with LED lights in each suburb across 45 towns & cities in South Africa.

Using our ‘iStar’ Arts competition to highlight sustainability projects of organisations that are already making a contribution to the lives of communities across the country.

Assisting ‘differently abled’ schools in 45 Towns across South Africa by generating funding for the upliftment of school facilities.

Contribute to the creation and imagination of new sustainable solutions for a better, healthier and brighter future across South African rural areas

A Show of Hands

Moral Magic at iStart2 Holy Cow Weekend

The Holy Cow Weekend on the 17 & 18th March 2012, celebrated our rich and diverse communities through performances by leading indigenous and sacred musicians and discussion sessions by leading academics, comedians and other experts.

Nadiem Solomon with an enlightening discussion on the Art of War…

風　Swift as the wind
林　Quiet as the forest
火　Conquer like the fire
山　Steady as the mountain

You have to believe in yourself.
Sun Tzu

Nadiem also milked some holy cows with his wonderful rendition of Jan Spies and other wonderful stories about the richness of South Africa’s diverse cultural groups.

Dr Abel Pienaar juggled the concepts of certainty, doubt and uncertainty… His T-shirt said it all…

"There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.The other is as though everything is a miracle." - Albert Einstein

Prof Christina Landman entertained us with changing shirts, introduced new concepts like “Moral Ecstasy” and  enlightened us with her “moral magic”. Yeah, “normal” people are really scary. ;-)

Swannie Swanevelder.  His hands are sore but his heart is full … to quote John Malcovich.... his wife asked him: why dont you get a proper job? he answered: "But I’m a puppeteer"! Thanx Swannie for letting the little people talk! Good luck in Taiwan. Make South Africa proud, Boet!

JP du Toit. Young poet and writer, shared some poems and continued his story on “The Six”…

“A twenty-something white male was driving from Brooklyn to Centurion accompanied by a twenty-something beautiful black female and her twenty-something frumpy white female friend at 2AM in the morning of Thursday the 29th. It was as their motor vehicle joined the M18 that they encountered a road block. A policeman standing in the road signalled for them to pull over to the side…” 

World renowned jazz muso, Pops Mohamed and Yusuf  Ganief & Lynn Holmes-Ganief from Desertrose, fused South Africa's abundant and varied sacred music and engaged with a delighted audience,  engaging them in an evening filled with magical music.

Pops Mohamed has been leading the battle to retain the indigenous African sounds so they are not overrun by the American pop sounds and on his quest has been joined by numerous African legends including jazz great Moses Khumalo.

His nickname Pops dates back to his childhood enthusiasm for the comic seaman Popeye. The prolific and multi-talented South African singer songwriter Pops Mohamed has been attracting international attention for almost two decades for his effortless versatility on in playing traditional and for his ability to fuse a startling scope of regional African styles with his elegant original compositions.

Thank you Pops Mohamed for joining the iStart2 journey. It was wonderful to spend a weekend with you. We learned so much. We look foward to continue the journey in the months to come.

All events during the weekend explored a larger vision of getting people to take hands across barriers and contribute to a sustainable earth. Be sure to be at our next Holy Cow Event and experience the greatness of moral magic … magical moments you will never forget...

Pops Mohamed at iStart2 Holy Cow event - Centurion

Holy Cow - An opportunity to experience the musical magic of one of the greatest musicians in South Africa.

Pops Mohamed is a well-travelled multi instrumentalist, who has taken it upon himself to keep traditional sounds – from mbqanga to ...kwela and marabi – alive. He specialises in indigenous instruments; the Kora (a harp from West Africa), the Mbira (a thumb piano from Zimbabwe), the Didgeridoo (native to the Aboriginal people of Australia) and the Birimbau and the African Mouth Bow – developed by the South American Indians and the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert respectively.

His Kalamazoo and Sophiatown albums, released in 1991 and 1992 were both nominated for “Best Jazz Album” in South Africa”s OKTV Awards. Pops is also a record producer, who has travelled widely recording ancient music and producing what is now being labelled as “World Music”. Pop”s produced Moses Molelekwa”s double award winning album “Finding Ones Self”, which won both the “Best Contemporary Jazz Album” and “Best Traditional Jazz Album” in the 1996 FNB music awards.

Recently Pops toured Switzerland with Andreas Vollenweider”s band featuring Max Lasser and Busi Mhlongo. As a result of his travels, he is constantly developing new approaches to music and strives to preserve ancient musical instruments as well as ancient performance techniques.

Saturday Evening, 18 March 2012 @20H00 at the iStart2 Hub in Centurion.

Sustainability through Art

iStart2

Email me to reserve your seat: pierre@istart2.com

iStart2 - The first three years...

iStart2 is a Sustainability through the Arts initiative which enlists the creative talents of artists, business people, communities, the media, government, differently abled individuals, and indigenous people from around the world to take hands across religious and cultural boundaries and to spread the message of energy conservation, waste management & saving water.

The Istart2 'Share The Magic' video tells the story of our launch at Cop17 in November 2011, it includes footage and endorsements from many of our ambassadors and supporters, and outlines how the idea was born. Join us in writing, painting and imagining a future horizon of sustainable footprints.

Three years in 12 and a half minutes...



Website should be up sometime this week! :-)

Feel free to share the video...

iStart2 Launch, Durban, South Africa

 iStart2 joining hands with Mary Robinson and Archbishop Desmond Tutu

In November 2011 iStart2 was launched in Durban as part of the International Cop17 Summit. The Launch was marked with a free concert & rally at Kings Park Stadium in partnership with the “We have Faith” initiative. 

Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Springbok Nude Girls front man Arno Carstens, Chris Chameleon and Rap star HHP were amongst those who performed. The sound of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, our host’s signature chuckle filled the Kings Park Rugby Stadium, while people from around the world gathered to listen to him speak and join in singing ‘iStart2 Change with these Hands’.