For the past couple of years the MK Awards have aimed to celebrate South Africa’s best Rock and Alternative music acts. The winners aren’t decided by any judges, but by you, the viewer. You have the opportunity to vote for you band or artist on the MK website. The winners will be announced on 23March, 2012, at the Pretoria State Theatre. The nominees are as follows:

 Best Video/Beste Video

aKing – The Runaround
Winterstasie – Los My
Spoek Mathambo – Control
Die Heuwels Fantasties – Modus Operandi
Locnville – Stars Above You
Jack Parow – Tussen Stasies

Best Newcomer/Beste Nuweling

The words to describe this trio don’t come easily. Conventional, definitely not. Blues influenced, very. Incredible, most definitely.

When a band releases a debut album of such emotion and consistency on every track, you can be assured that you have something special on your hands, as is the case with Machineri.

Formed in 2008 by lead singer Sannie Fox and guitarist Andre Geldenhuys, the band has been slowly biding their time to become one of the top new acts of the last year. It has grown to include drummer Daniel Huxham. Initially the band struggled to find a drummer that perfectly suited their style. In an interview with Just Music Fox said that they went through six drummers before they found Daniel.

South African comedian and all round funny guy Trevor Noah appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in Los Angeles on Friday night (it will be aired in South Africa tonight, 10 January, on CNBC Africa). The comedian received a standing ovation from the audience who were in stitches, especially when they played a short clip in which Noah teased some African-Americans who turn whole sentences into single words with, as he puts it, “no regard for punctuation”.

Directly after the show Noah tweeted:”Just did the Tonight Show set and it was amazing. I got a standing ovation! Words cannot describe how happy I am.”

Have you ever found a band that you thought was amazing but for some reason or another never managed to make it beyond a couple of local gigs? Financial constraints are, perhaps, the biggest problem new bands face when they try to break into the music industry. Often there simply isn’t enough money in the kitty to buy studio time or even to market a mini-tour. Now you can make a difference; you can help give a band the aid it needs to crack the big time with Fanraiser.

When one thinks of dancers one tends to think of strong, lithe, perfect bodies working together in perfect unison. One does not readily think of people in wheelchairs. The Remix Dance Company aims to change that with its mission to bring integrated dance to the masses.

The company was founded in 2000 by Malcolm Black, himself a disabled dancer, and Nicola Visser. Black is now the company’s artistic director and has received a great deal of critical acclaim for his first foray into choreography, Off Key, for this year’s Dance Umbrella.

The company has also performed at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival and in 2002 it won the Arts and Culture Trust Award: Cultural Development Project of the year. In 2006, it won the Western Cape Cultural Commission Award for its Outstanding Contribution to Disability and the Arts.

If you were in South Africa in the late 80s and early 90s you probably had Mango-fever; it was characterised by an addiction to the country’s newest music sensation: Mango Groove. The band thumbed its collective nose at South Africa’s dubious political policies by comprising black and white musical artists. In fact, one of its founders was the iconic Aaron “Big Voice” Jack Lerole. From 1988 to 1992 Mango Groove dominated the South African airwaves and then they seemed to fade away. Now they’re back to prove their staying power with a brand new live DVD, Mango Groove Live in Concert; their first live DVD concert ever.

Chris Chameleon is one of South Africa’s more colourful music artists, which is perhaps apt considering his name. Even though he sings primarily in Afrikaans, he has great crossover appeal and is popular with all audiences in South Africa. It’s a point of pride for him to release an album once a year and this year he has something special up his sleeve. As Jy Weer Skryf is a follow up to his enormously popular debut solo album Ek Herhaal Jou, which was a collection of Ingrid Jonker’s poems set to music.

Ek Herhaal Jou was Chameleon’s first solo album after his band, Boo!, split up in 2004. It was an instant hit with critics and music lovers. It reached gold status in South Africa within a year and just over a year after that it went platinum.

Infiltrating IDOLS

‘Singing pop is not selling out, not doing music is selling out’

So I decided to audition for Idols. Not Pop Idols… that would be the classier, original, money-fueled version. No. I entered Idols SA from the gorgeous and talent-laden mother-city, held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.

Anyway, it started as an adventure on a whim. Dani heads off at 4 in the morning in a tiny rokkie and my (security-blanket) cowboy boots only to find a place in a queue behind the REALLY keen hundreds that had the idea before me.

The Cape Town leg of Durban-based band Car Boot Vendor’s Easy as Pie national tour kicked off on Monday 24 January at The Waiting Room in Long Street. The band had gigs planned at most of the popular Cape Town venues including Zula Bar, Blizzards Cocktail Bar, ROAR and Octopus Gardens.  The Durbanites shared the stage with a number of local acts including Forgotten Superhero, Captain Stu, Joshua Grierson, The Mochines, Half Price and Sloppy Folk. Did you manage to catch one of their shows?

If you didn’t, don’t fret, their EP Home is Home is available to listen on their MySpace page.  The band is a one and a half years old and has cemented its position as one of the leading advocates of the recent wave of hard-hitting folk-punk-rock that is beginning to come into its own in South Africa.

It has taken Mr Cat and the Jackal over a year to complete their second studio album and finally it is here (well, almost). The album was set to be launched in February 2011 but due to a “leaky ship” fans will have to wait a little bit longer to get their hands on the golden stuff; the new album.

But have no fear little ‘uns, the new music video launch is still going ahead as planned. On 11 February the video for The Devil Always Wants to Dance will be released for your eyes and ears at the Klein Libertas Theatre in Stellenbosch. The video is for the first single off the new album Sins and Siren Songs.